ACC Grant of Rights: The Beginning of the End of Conference Realignment?

Despite being a Big Ten guy that would personally love to have Jim Delany add Florida State, I’ve repeated the following statement many times on this blog: the ACC is much stronger than what people give it credit for. It’s not that I’m a fan of the ACC at all, but simply a reflection that it has never been as open for poaching as so many conference realignment observers thought or wanted it to be. Despite perceived TV contract problem, it’s a conference with strong brand names and good-to-great academics in arguably the most demographically desirable geographic footprint of any league in the country. So, it wasn’t a surprise to me that the ACC finally solidified its position to the outside world with its members unanimously agreeing to a grant of media rights to the conference through 2026-27. For the uninitiated, the “Grant of Rights” is a key tool in protecting a conference’s membership since each school individually grants its media rights to its league for a set period of time, which applies even if such school ends up defecting. For example, if an ACC school now attempted to leave for the Big Ten, SEC or Big 12, the ACC would still own that school’s media rights until 2026-27. That effectively makes ACC schools worthless from a raiding conference’s standpoint since they either can’t get access to those media rights or would have to pay a large buyout to the ACC to obtain them. The Big Ten, Pac-12 and Big 12 schools have already agreed to a grant of rights to their respective conferences.

With 4 of the 5 power conferences having a vested legal interest in seeing grant of rights agreements being upheld in court (and the 5th power conference that doesn’t have a grant of rights, the SEC, being so strong financially off-the-field and competitively on-the-field), it’s likely that we have seen an end to power conference realignment for the next decade or so. There’s a chance that the Big 12 may be compelled to expand back up to 12 or more members from its current 10 or that the Pac-12 could eventually find a current Mountain West Conference member attractive, but the shifting between the power conferences themselves is probably over. From the Big Ten’s perspective, it’s probably all well and good. As much as I personally wanted the Big Ten to look at a school like Florida State, it likely only had eyes for the AAU likes of Virginia, North Carolina and Georgia Tech, all of whom would have been extremely difficult to poach (particularly UNC). The SEC also was set on looking at UNC and maybe rival Duke as a pair, which also would have been a monumental task to pull off. Much like the Big Ten was better off seeing Texas stay in a weakened Big 12 as opposed to heading off to a stronger Pac-16, if Jim Delany can’t nab his alma mater of UNC for himself, maintaining the status quo is much more preferable than seeing UNC head off to the SEC (as unlikely that would have been). From both the conference financial and fan perspectives, there isn’t any Big Ten expansion scenario that makes any sense without 2 or more schools from one of the ACC or Big 12. I’m sure that Mike Slive and SEC fans would feel the same way about SEC expansion.

The conference realignment game has been particularly cruel to American Athletic Conference* orphans UConn and Cincinnati. Their most realistic paths back to power conference status were all via further raids of the ACC opening up more slots. Neither school fits the profile of what the Big Ten and SEC would be looking for, the Pac-12 is out of geographic reach, and the ACC isn’t likely going up to 16 with either of them and would only be interested in them as backfill candidates in the event they ever do lose other members. The best hope for UConn and Cincinnati at this point (and it’s a bit better for the latter) is that the Big 12 ends up having an urgent need to expand again. Using 20/20 hindsight, the Big 12 might rue the day that they passed over taking Louisville and a 12th school (either BYU or Cincinnati) as the ACC surprised a lot of people in grabbing what has ended up being a fairly valuable football and basketball chip off of the table. A Louisville/BYU combo was likely financially viable to the Big 12 in a way that any BYU/Cincinnati/UConn combo probably can’t be, so the Big 12 seems stalled at 10. That might be perfectly fine for the conference’s university presidents and athletic directors at this time, but having a lack of viable expansion options is a much more acute long-term problem for a 10-school conference than ones at 12 or 14 members. I’ve never been a proponent of any conference expanding simply for the sake of expanding, yet it feels like the Big 12 didn’t take advantage of a momentary position of strength after they signed their new TV deal with ESPN and Fox last year. Now, to be sure, I never bought for one second that the Big 12 had any legitimate chance at Florida State and Clemson (the former was really only interested in shaking the money trees of the Big Ten and SEC). However, adding Louisville and BYU would have been a solid expansion both athletically and geographically for the Big 12 and that’s an opportunity that has slipped away. The ACC’s choice of Louisville over UConn and Cincinnati effectively blocked Big 12 expansion, whether John Swofford intended for that to happen or not (and I tend to agree with Andy Staples that Swofford is a ninja that has been underestimated by a lot of college sports fans).

As for the ACC itself, there’s little point in entertaining expansion for the foreseeable future. Contrary to the belief of a surprisingly large number of sports fans, the fact that the ACC has an odd number of basketball teams as a result of Notre Dame’s non-football membership has absolutely zero bearing on conference realignment. The only time that an odd number of schools matters is for a football alignment, which wouldn’t apply in the case of the ACC. Therefore, the conference certainly wouldn’t add a single all-sports member to create an odd number of football schools, and it’s doubtful that going up to 16 is appealing with the ongoing hope (however misguided that it might be) that Notre Dame might join the league as a football member within the next 40 years.

Speaking of Notre Dame, the Irish have managed to solidify their independence for the foreseeable future with an extension of their contract with NBC through 2025. If one thing has been made clear through conference realignment over the past 3 years (to the extent that it wasn’t already clear), it’s that Notre Dame’s ironclad principle is to maintain independence above making the most TV money (which, to be sure, is still quite good for them), scheduling concerns or any other factor besides being structurally foreclosed from winning a national championship (which will be far from the case in the new 4-team playoff format). The ACC is honestly a perfect setup for Notre Dame – the Irish get access to a power conference for non-football sports and a full slate of bowls with a partial conference scheduling commitment that consists largely of schools that they would generally be willing to play, anyway. They’re not going anywhere for a loooong time.

Related

Not that there aren’t more important things in life, but I think it’s cool to know that one day I can have kids who can grow up on the ACC just like I did and just as people for 3 generations have around here. Sorry to those who salivated over 16-, 18-, or 20-team Big Ten scenarios made up of 3-7 former ACC schools, but the ACC is something that is just as special to this part of the country as the Big Ten is to Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, or Illinois.

Yeah, me too. The only scenario I would have liked was UNC to the SEC, and that was iffy at best so this is the best possible outcome. I’m glad all of this is over. And I’m glad Missouri got out of the Big 12.

Michael,
I completely agree. I attended Purdue for college and Duke for grad school. I really enjoyed my time RTP, especially after I became immersed in ACC basketball games. I believe there is something to be said for regionally based schools and conferences. College athletics would have taken a step back without an intact and healthy ACC. I think Maryland will regret their decision over the long run….

Md, will not regret their decision in the long run – complete nonsense. If there was one school with a compatible culture to the BIG, Md was it. Md has long shed it’s so-called southern culture & much of NoVa is doing the same. Bmore is eerily similar to Philly-Camden, Newark-NYC, and many Rust Belt cities. I think of the eastern BIG like the AFC Central. The Ravens share a football division with Pitt, Cincy, & Clev – thus cultural crossover and relations already exists in the biggest sport of all.

Md will get plenty of competition in sports they value via BIG membership.

I honestly believe Md has the makings of a strong athletic department, top to bottom, within the next decade. They won’t get there with an ACC membership. They have all the ingredients to become an Oregon in football: big time affiliation with an athletic brand (Under Armor), great hs basketball, strong hs football, PSU probation, Rutger’s not being in big-time athletics long, right between Bmore & DC, both being on part of one of the fastest growing super metros in the nation & some of the best public high schools, academically, in the country.

Fear the Turtle!

On the other hand, the ACC will need to work really hard at maintaing its northern members – Lville, ND, Syracuse, Pitt and BC combined aren’t going to put up with perceptions of Carolina control. I laughed when reading that Boeheim and Pitino slighted the prospect of permanently keeping the ACC basketball tourney in Greensboro. Look it up, good stuff, their reactions. Cuse and Lville have some weight with Tobacco Road hoops at this point, though not as mighty. ND, as we already know, call shots on the football end.

If you assume that the Big Ten can pick and choose any school it wants, then Rutgers / Maryland were lame adds.

If, however, conference realignment were to settle down for a decade or more, that suddenly puts them in a much stronger light. Looking ahead twenty and fifty years, the twelve school Big Ten before adding Rutgers and Maryland is in a much weaker position than the fourteen school Big Ten including Rutgers and Maryland.

“If you assume that the Big Ten can pick and choose any school it wants, then Rutgers / Maryland were lame adds.”

Or if you think CFB quality is the measure. Or if you think cultural fit is vital. Or if you don’t believe they will lead to the tremendous riches other project.

“If, however, conference realignment were to settle down for a decade or more, that suddenly puts them in a much stronger light. Looking ahead twenty and fifty years, the twelve school Big Ten before adding Rutgers and Maryland is in a much weaker position than the fourteen school Big Ten including Rutgers and Maryland.”

You can think that, but you can’t possibly know that. After a decade of quiet, the B10 might regret adding them. Perhaps as the B12 GOR expires UT, KU, and 2 more B12 schools seriously consider joining. Then going east for 2 athletic lightweights may look like a bad decision as the plains schools question whether they want to play on the east coast and dilute the conference earnings to support RU and UMD. I’m not saying it’s likely, just that crystal balls rarely work.

There is no move you can set forward that you can know for sure will turn right: any realignment move can possibly go sour. Pointing that out for one move when comparing it to some other hypothetical moves smacks of cherrypicking the argument. Nobody could have known when Penn State was invited in that some decades down the track it would turn out to be harboring vile secrets, either, but while Penn State may never again recapture its halo, over the coming decade it is highly likely to be vying for the conference championship and harboring national championship hopes.

New Jersey is good ground, and the network economies on Philadelphia make it even better. Nor is solidly entrenched in the northern suburbs of Greater Washington a bad position to be.

I am, of course, repeatedly and noisily skeptical of projecting of the current growth in college football revenues ahead, since much of the growth over the past decade has been an increase in the share of cable revenues ~ both live sports programming gaining an increasing share of all cable revenues, and college football gaining an increasing share of live sports revenues. Since the increases in revenue share for live sport programming has a hard ceiling that is somewhere short of it capturing 100% of cable revenue, I think those projections are likely on fairly shaky ground over the longer term.

But that’s like the false dichotomy between Rutgers capturing all of the NYC media market and adding Rutgers being a miserable failure … there is plenty of benefit to the Big Ten in adding New Jersey, in the New York and Philadelphia media markets as well as the exits in between. Whether or not those media revenue projections turn out to be a will-o-wisp, including more rapidly growing population areas in the Big Ten footprint is the short odds side of the bet.

The perfect 20/20 foresight is on the side of the argument that clearly sees what a bad move the Rutgers and Maryland adds will surely prove to be. In the here and now, they are good recruiting grounds to add to the Big Ten, as well as giving the Big Ten an opportunity to strengthen its grip on Eastern PA.

“There is no move you can set forward that you can know for sure will turn right: any realignment move can possibly go sour.”

Exactly true. That’s what makes statements like

If, however, conference realignment were to settle down for a decade or more, that suddenly puts them in a much stronger light.

and

Looking ahead twenty and fifty years, the twelve school Big Ten before adding Rutgers and Maryland is in a much weaker position than the fourteen school Big Ten including Rutgers and Maryland.

seem out of place.

How does a decade of peace automatically make UMD and RU look better? How do you know they won’t look the exact same or worse then?

“Pointing that out for one move when comparing it to some other hypothetical moves smacks of cherrypicking the argument.”

I pointed out a potential counter solely to show that you have no basis to make those statements.

“Nobody could have known when Penn State was invited in that some decades down the track it would turn out to be harboring vile secrets, either, but while Penn State may never again recapture its halo, over the coming decade it is highly likely to be vying for the conference championship and harboring national championship hopes.”

So you’re less sure PSU will be good again than that UMD and RU will suddenly be put in a much stronger light? I have a lot more faith in PSU.

“New Jersey is good ground, and the network economies on Philadelphia make it even better. Nor is solidly entrenched in the northern suburbs of Greater Washington a bad position to be.

“I am, of course, repeatedly and noisily skeptical of projecting of the current growth in college football revenues ahead,”

But you are confident about how valuable UMD and RU will be in 50 years. How?

“But that’s like the false dichotomy between Rutgers capturing all of the NYC media market and adding Rutgers being a miserable failure … there is plenty of benefit to the Big Ten in adding New Jersey, in the New York and Philadelphia media markets as well as the exits in between.”

Is there, or do you just want there to be? Has the BTN signed new deals that I’m not aware of? Has the B10 leaked the actual increased value of the BTN in 2014?

“Whether or not those media revenue projections turn out to be a will-o-wisp, including more rapidly growing population areas in the Big Ten footprint is the short odds side of the bet.”

A lot can happen in 50 years.

“The perfect 20/20 foresight is on the side of the argument that clearly sees what a bad move the Rutgers and Maryland adds will surely prove to be.”

I believe he said “lame,” not “bad.”

“In the here and now, they are good recruiting grounds to add to the Big Ten,”

The B10 has been recruiting there for years.

” as well as giving the Big Ten an opportunity to strengthen its grip on Eastern PA.”

“How does a decade of peace automatically make UMD and RU look better? How do you know they won’t look the exact same or worse then?”

Who said a decade of peace automatically makes UMD and RU look better? Shouldn’t this part of your reply be directed to them?

I said a decade of peace makes the addition of UMD and Maryland look better. That follows since how good a choice looks depends on what the alternatives are. A decade of realignment peace without the UMD and Rutgers adds means another decade of the Big Ten in the demographic box that it was in before.

If UMD and/or Rutgers become more compelling as opponents in football or sports in which they are already more interesting opponents become more important in the overall calculus, that is a bonus on top of that. That’s part of the headroom for the value of the expansion, its not its foundation.

“I said a decade of peace makes the addition of UMD and Maryland look better.”

Do you really want to argue semantics?

“That follows since how good a choice looks depends on what the alternatives are. A decade of realignment peace without the UMD and Rutgers adds means another decade of the Big Ten in the demographic box that it was in before.”

Assuming nothing changes in 10 years, maybe. That’s a huge assumption, though. Few people thought there was a problem before all of this, and even TPTB say expansion was all about money.

The Rust Belt could be on an upswing. A natural disaster could crush one of the newbies. A huge scandal could devastate one of the schools. The O’Bannon case could completely change the way people view college athletics.

“If UMD and/or Rutgers become more compelling as opponents in football or sports in which they are already more interesting opponents become more important in the overall calculus, that is a bonus on top of that. That’s part of the headroom for the value of the expansion, its not its foundation.”

I’m certain there is plenty of gnashing of teeth in Storrs tonight, and a celebration of sorts in Chestnut Hill. Connecticut now finds itself boxed out of a big-time conference (as does Cincinnati, but the Bearcats are less ambitious). Meanwhile, WVU is still stranded on the Big 12 island, with its nearest neighbor in Ames. You can hear the loud laughter from Austin, as Bevo acquired another sucker

So if Connecticut, Cincinnati and West Virginia are the big losers in the 2010-2014 era of expansion, who are the winners? Certainly Nebraska, Maryland and Rutgers for joining the Big Ten; Missouri and Texas A&M for joining the SEC; Texas Christian for joining the Big 12 (unlike WVU, it’s a comfortable move); and, lest we forget, Utah and Colorado for joining the Pac. Swofford and the ACC are winners for preserving a conference with a relatively weak football brand; Delany a winner for getting the Big Ten solid footing on the Eastern Seaboard; and Slive for extending the SEC footprint with two AAU institutions. Less secure winners are Scott (he wanted to achieve much more) and Bowlsby (a good Longhorn lackey).

I think Slive and the SEC presidents are pretty happy with their additions. They got a foothold in several really good tv markets in Texas & Missouri, plus added 2 AAU school like you said.

As a SEC fan, I am really happy with aTm. I think they have a chance to take their football program up a notch if they can keep up their current momentum. They fit really well both football wise and culturally. Plus I actually think they can foster decent to good rivalries with LSU and Arky, and have some interesting series with Bama, Ole Miss, and Miss St.

Mizzou is a little more blah (for a lack of a better word). I’m still not sold that they’ll be able to recruit well enough to be consistently competitive in the SEC. Also I think they are a little more of a stretch as a cultural fit. And outside of Arkansas, I’m not sure how well they will be able to foster rivalries in the SEC (maybe UK or Vandy?). But I understand that they were our best available choice to come in with aTm, and they do offer the things that I listed above (which are really big from the overall president and SEC office standpoint).

I think once the SECN is up and running, people will look back and say that they were really good additions for the SEC.

Missouri was added to class up your league. We increased your number of AAU schools by 33% and added some more urban markets in St. Louis and Kansas City. Cultural fit isn’t an issue. Don’t forget Missouri had a star on the confederate flag, and borders 3 SEC states. We also added more strength to what is a middling basketball league. Missouri football might not be great but we’ve been to 30 bowl games and have had some good seasons over the years, including a top 4 finish in the final BCS standings just 6 years ago. Alabama still doesn’t have the lead against Missouri in the all-time football series. You’re lucky to have us. You couldn’t have done any better other than going inside your footprint by taking FSU.

Men’s Basketball
Kentucky has 8 NCAA banners
Florida has 2 NCAA banners
Arkansas has 1 NCAA banner
LSU has been to the Final Four 4 times
Georgia has 1 Final Four
Mississippi State has 1 Final Four

Mizzou has 0 National Championships and 0 Final Fours

Women’s Basketball
Tennessee has 8 NCAA banners
Texas A&M has 1 NCAA banner
Louisiana State has 5 Final Fours
Georgia has 5 Final Fours
Auburn has 3 Final Fours
Alabama has 1 Final Four
Arkansas has 1 Final Four
Vanderbilt has 1 Final Four

duffman, Missouri has the 3rd most NCAA appearances and conference titles among SEC schools, after only Kentucky and Arkansas. Yes, it’s a well known fact that Missouri pretty much always underperforms in the tournament. That in no way removes all of th success they’ve had in the regular season over th eyears.

They had wins in the Big 8 and Big 12 against lower basketball conferences and teams played. The Mizzou teams could be #2 behind KU all time in the Big 8 but that does not negate the HUGE success differential between the schools in the NCAA. Historically I would say Oklahoma State is higher up the basketball food chain than Missouri and nobody is saying Oklahoma State is a top team. They stopped the SEC tournament for decades because of UK winning it all the time but that did not stop UK from winning the NCAA. I like Xavier and A10 basketball but I am not saying Xavier is better than Duke because they win their conference more, yet this is the argument you seem to propose about Missouri. I know you are proud of your team but that does not change the fact they have not won at the highest level in the country no matter how well they do in a region.

First off, I clearly acknowledged the fact that Mizzou added an AAU school and good tv markets (I thought I was pretty clear on that). I realize that Mizzou was probably the best option to be #14 at the time, especially from the presidents’ & Slive’s standpoint.

As far as the cultural fit goes, just because you had a star on a flag over 100 years ago, doesn’t mean you are a cultural fit. I think most people view Missouri as far more of a mid-western and/or plains state than a southern state. And while you do share a border with 3 SEC states, you barely share one with 2 of those states.

I kept hearing how your basketball program was going to be a great addition to our conference, yet when I researched it, I wasn’t all that impressed. Mizzou is basically a upper-middle tier SEC basketball program, which is below UK, UF, and Arky. They are basically on the same level as Vandy and Tenn (& maybe Bama historically). That isn’t really all that impressive considering are against SEC basketball schools. It’s not like they are some sort of basketball power or something.

You still didn’t address my concerns about being able to recruit well enough in football to be competitive in the SEC. Sure you had some fairly recent success in the Big 12 North, but the Big 12 North has never been seen as a particularly strong division (especially in comparasion with it’s southern brother). Big 12 North schools were also never know as great recruiting schools. And the surround areas are definitely not known as recruiting hot beds. Football success in the old Big 8 and Big 12 North doesn’t translate into success in the SEC, especially if your can’t recruit at a pretty high level.

Now I agree (and said) that once the SECN is up and running, Mizzou will be looked upon as a successful addition. I never said that they were a bad addition. I just said from a SEC fan’s standpoint, it was kind of a blah (or ho hum) addition.

I am guessing alan will remind you that LSU has a good basketball history. They may only be behind Kentucky in Final Four trips even if they did not make championship games like Florida and Arkansas. On a related note why does Alabama never seem to get over the basketball hump? They have had good coaches, players, and seasons but never seem to dance.

duff – thanks. LSU is only behind Kentucky in the number of SEC basketball regular season championships with 11. Four Final Four appearances, and three of the top 50 NBA players of all time (Shaq, the Pistol, and Bob Pettit). While my Tigers have only been sporadically relevant over the last 20 years, LSU has won 3 SEC championships since 2000 – more than any other school not named Kentucky or Florida. While LSU has only been a consistent winner during the Dale Brown era, LSU has had some great players and teams. I expect LSU to be a consistent top 5 SEC program under Johnny Jones. He’s Dale’s protege, but looks to be a better bench coach than Dale. A top 10 recruiting class is coming in next year. Look for LSU to make the NCAAs next season.

bamatab, if you go by march alone then Missouri isn’t all that impressive. That’s because Missouri has a long and inglorious history of being upset early in the tournament time and time again, including in recent years, but going back for decades. It sucks, but it doesn’t take away from the fact that Missouri has had a lot of historical success in the regular season. Compare Missouri to the teams you mentioned:

Missouri: 26 NCAAs, 23 conference titles (regular season and tournament), and these came in a tougher basketball league than the SEC

Now, I understand you’re definitely not a basketball guy and you probably don’t know much about any of this, and comparing Missouri to Vanderbilt pretty much proves this, but I think it should be clear that Missouri, historically, as far as regular season success, is pretty far behind Kentucky, not that far behind Arkansas (considering a lot of their success came in the very weak SWC), and ahead of everyone else. If you bring March into the equasion, Missouri looks worse, just because they’ve done so badly there. Here are those rankings:

Now, if Missouri played to seed and didn’t get upset all the time they’d have over 30 wins. But they find a way to lose games in March, almost always have, which is why Missouri is the most successful program to have never made a final 4. Sure you can flame me and say that that fact invalidates everything else we’ve done over the years, but we have walls of Big 8 and Big 12 trophies that say otherwise.

As for football recruiting, it will take some adjusting. Missouri has averaged about 9 wins per season over the last 8 seasons, and they didn’t do this by having bad players. Missouri has had as many first round draft picks as almost any other SEC school over the past few years, and should have another this year. Missouri has as many players in the NFL as most SEC schools. But budget and facilities are a limiting factor right now. Missouri is currently in construction on $200M in facilities upgrades as part of our move to the SEC. Donations are at an all time high right now. The new SEC tv deal should increase Missouri’s revenue by around $20M/yr over their previous Big 12 contract. That alone would move Missouri from 32nd to 14th in the country in athletic budget. If ticket sales and donations continue to climb then Missouri could get into the top 12. That would go a long way to improving recruiting.

And as far as cultural fit, I can see how Missouri is confusing to people. It is truly the crossroads of America. St. Louis seems like Big Ten kind of city. Kansas City seems very Big 12. Rural and southern Missouri is very much SEC. Southern accents, southern culture. Up until the early 70s they played Dixie at Missouri football games and everybody knew the words. “Southern cooking” is probably the most popular style in rural Missouri. The big cities in Missouri are definitely not very SEC, I agree, but then maybe the SEC could use a little of that.

Andy, see my post above about the difference between conference wins and national ones

Where I do take issue with your post is telling bamatab he is wrong about Vanderbilt. While I would say historically the SEC has been tougher that the Big 8 + SWC you forget the history of college basketball in the past. Prior to the age of the big arenas like Rupp and the Dean Dome the gym at Vanderbilt was consistently in the top in attendance in the entire country. Like Michigan State being next to Michigan in football and Purdue being next to Indiana in basketball the folks in Nashville had the dubious location issue to be close to UK (8 titles) / IU (5 titles) / UL (3 titles) / UC (2 titles) and some solid second tier basketball schools in OH, IN, KY, and TN. Missouri has never had the same dynamic so it appears to be you that does not understand the background.

You may not believe me but I have been to games in that venue before and I am willing to guess that Mizzou will not win there next year. They may have the best home court advantage in the entire country based on that gym.

So you’re going to tell me that the SEC has been a much stronger basketball league than the Big 12? The numbers would seem to disprove that statement.

And as I said, Missouri has underachieved in March. IF they hadn’t, then the Big 12 would have an even bigger lead historically. Missouri has more conference titles than anyone in the Big 12 other than Kansas and Texas, and more conference titles than anyone in the SEC other than Kentukcy and Arkansas. Where they’ve come up short is in March, and yes that’s a legit knock on the tigers, but it in no way invalidates their regular season success, as much as you would like to say that it has. Missouri did that in the 3rd or 4th best basketball conference in the country. You can’t take that away from them.

You can’t be serious. And even if you want to just go by recent years and not include all of Missouri’s success back in the Norm Stewart era, Missouri has been to 2 elite 8s in the last 10 years, 4 straight NCAA tournaments, finished the regular season before last ranked #2 in the AP poll. Vandy no elite 8’s since 1965, no sweet 16s in 6 years, no NCAA this year. I mean really. You really want to say Vandy is on par with Missouri? No. They’re not. Not in football. Not in basketball. They’ve got us in academics, that’s true.

So based on your logic, I guess you think that Mizzou is a better basketball program than Florida at this point in time in history, and will be for the foreseeable future? I personally think that the UF basketball program today is a far better basketball program than Mizzou, and is setup to continue to be one in the foreseeable future. Until the early 90’s, UF’s football program was not good at all. Yet, I think most would say it is one of the top 5 jobs for potential coaches in college football.

I think when all is said and done, Mizzou’s SEC basketball future will be in the tier with Arky, UT, Bama, Vandy (Unlike you apparently, I think Vandy is setup for this tier due primarily to location), and maybe UGA and LSU as the next tier below UK & UF (although Arky could jump up to this top SEC tier, but I doubt it).

duffman,

I don’t know why Bama can’t get over the hump in basketball. We recruit ok. But we just can’t seem to get past the Sweet 16 in our good years (we’ve only made one Elite 8 in our history), and we haven’t been able to get that far on a regular basis. There is no reason why Bama can’t make it to the Sweet 16 consistantly.

Bama, you can certainly hope for that to be the case, but you’re basically admitting that your opinion has nothing to do with facts.

Vanderbilt is nothing special in basketball. They’ve done less, historically, than Iowa State and not much more than Colorado. Yeah they won the SEC tournament last year, and maybe you’re one of those guys with a very short memory so maybe that really impressed you for some reason. But Missouri won their conference tournament last year too. And they’ve done it a lot more times than Vandy ever has. Look at all those numbers I posted above and you’ll see that.

Look, I get that Florida has had a good run, and probably has a solid future. At this point, with almost 20 years of solid success, even though it’s almost all been under the one coach, I think it’s safe to say that Florida has joined Kentucky in that top tier. But if we’re going to count things that way then the exact opposite is true of Arkansas. They were great in the 80s and 90s, but they’ve flat out sucked for a decade now. If I were to rank the SEC based on how good they’ve been (tournament AND regular season) and where it looks like they’re headed, I’d rank it this way:

Andy, lets use your data and go head to head. At first glance the SEC = 265 Vols but the Vols have a bigger arena and the Lady Vols
Translation = MU’s men’s team is below UT’s women’s team in success / exposure

SEC #7 = Auburn 12 vs Big 12 #7 = Iowa State 14
AU has 1 Elite Eight and ISU has 2 Elite Eights on a 2 game differential
I will say ISU because Auburn is a football state and 1 ISU Elite Eight was in 1944

SEC #8 = Mississippi State 11 vs Big 12 #8 = Colorado 10
MSU has 1 Final Four in 1990 and CU has 2 Final Fours on a 1 game differential
Win for MSU as their Final Four was in 1990 and CU’s were in 1942 and 1955

SEC #9 = Vanderbilt 10 vs Big 12 #9 = Texas A&M 9
VU has 1 Elite Eight in 1965 and TAMU has 0 Elite Eights on a 1 game differential
Win for VU as TAMU has historically been a football school

SEC #10 = Georgia 5 vs Big 12 #10 = Baylor 9
UGA has 1 Final Four in 1983 and BU has 2 Final Fours on a 4 game differential
Win for Baylor but their Final Fours were in 1948 and 1950

Andy, for some reason it cut off the top of the post and started in the middle which is where Missouri and Tennessee were. The general point was the SEC > Big 12 + SWC + Big 8 even though early on the the SEC was not winning as much. The other bigger point is how lopsided the UK vs KU games are compared to UK vs IU. I think UK has beaten KU 21 – 6 but UK vs IU is closer (especially if you remove the UK wins after Bobby) so the SEC elite > than the B12 elite and your precious Mizzou has never beaten UK in their entire history.

In case you didn’t get what I’m saying: Yeah Kentucky and Florida are more consistent tournament teams, but on the whole the Big 8/12 has won 20% more NCAA tournament games than the SEC. It is the tougher league from top to bottom. Missouri winning 23 conference titles in the Big 12 is worth at least as much as if it had won 23 titles in the SEC, and is probably worth more on the order of 25 or 26 SEC titles. Either way, Missouri is solidly in 3rd historically behind Kentucky and Arkansas, and if we’re talking mementum, they’re in 3rd behind Kentucky and Florida and ahead of Arkansas.

OK, Andy that’s just crazy talk. I know you are new to the SEC and don’t know the history of the league in any sport, but to say that if Mizzou had always been in the SEC, they’d have 25 or 26 championships is insane. The SEC has played 81 basketball seasons and Kentucky has won 45 of those regular season championships. LSU is next with 11, followed by Bama & Tennessee with 8. Florida & Miss State have 6. Vandy has 3. Auburn, Arkansas & South Carolina have two each. Georgia has one championship.

Without going into the rankings by each year along with tournament results, I serioulsy doubt Mizzou would have won roughly one third of the SEC’s basketball championships, especially when you take into consideration that Kentucky has 14 final four appearances, Arkansas has six (two as a member of the SEC), Florida and LSU have 4, Miss State and Georgia have one each. For Mizzou to pick up 25 or 26 SEC championships, Mizzou would have to run the table on just about every year Kentucky didn’t, leaving nine championships for the rest of the conference, which has had some pretty good basketball teams over the years.

Sorry Alan, but it’s not crazy talk. I was basing it on extrapolated direct comparisons between leagues. The Big 12 has roughly 300 NCAA tournament wins, the SEC has roughly 250. So the Big 12 is around 18% better. And I wasn’t saying 25 regular season only, btw, I was saying regular season and conference tournament. Missouri had 22 of those in the Big 12. But no SEC school has more than 18 of those other than UK and Arkansas (and 90% of Arkansas’s came in the SWC). If you’re in love with Final 4s, and I think that’s a pretty limited measure, then the Big 12 still wins.

The Big 12 has just been a tougher basketball league. I don’t fault you for not knowing that before, but now you do, so you have no excuse.

Yes, Missouri has been upset in the tournament over and over and over and over again. Lost early as a 2, 2, 4, 6, 3, 5, and 2 seeds. As a fan, it’s been maddening. That’s probably 10 or 15 NCAA wins that Missouri *should* have had, but didn’t get. Win those and they’re up above Florida in terms of NCAA wins. But what that means is if you evaluate Missouri by their NCAA tournament success then they’re going to look much, much worse than if you evaluate them by their regular season success. And they’ve had a lot of regular season success in a league that according to the facts is a tougher league than the SEC. To try to diminish that is ignorance. An ignorance that I just cured you of.

Mike if you want to take away stuff from pre-1948 then a lot of schools are going to lose a lot of wins and titles. Kentucky, for example, loses 22 out of their 85 regular season and conference tournament titles.

And before anyone complains about how the SEC didn’t have a conference tournament from 1953-78, I’ll remind you that the Big 8 didn’t even have a tournament until 1977, so there were actually more opportunities for SEC schools to win conference tournaments, not less, when I showed those totals above.

Mike, Kansas loses 25 out of their 56 conference and tournament titles if you take away everything from before 1948. It would be more but the Big 8 didn’t have a tournament back in the old days like Kentucky did, so Kentucky won an extra 14 tournament tiles that way.

So you could re-run all of those numbers post 1948, but then everybody’s numbers goes down, and Missourii’s 16 post-1948 titles will still be just as high on the list.

And btw, the fact that schools like Colorado, Baylor, Georgia, and MSU have final 4s and Missouri doesn’t just proves beyond a reasonable doubt how limited it is to use final 4s as the main measure of how good a program is. For example, Missouri leads the all time series with Colorado 99-53, but Colorado leads in Final 4s 2 to 0. Haw haw, right? But everybody knows Missouri has the better program.

Andy says:
If you’re in love with Final 4s, and I think that’s a pretty limited measure, then the Big 12 still wins. I added the years so it is a more complete picture. and segregated by UCLA’s last win under Wooden in 1975.

bamatab, asking whether “Missouri” is southern or midwestern is mis-stating the question, since it implies its either one or the other, when the correct answer is that its both. Clearly, the majority of Missouri is midwestern. Just as clearly, the southeastern corner of the state is southern, and that is somewhere around 1/4 to 1/3 of the state population.

Missouri’s football will be OK in the SEC. In spite of all the injuries they had this year to go along with a challenging non-conference schedule, they still would have made a bowl game if they hadn’t suspended their best player before the Syracuse game for failing to attend classes. They were 5-5 going into that game, knowing they had little chance to win the last game of the year at A&M, and they suspended him anyway. I applaud them for that, even though they ended up losing 31-27 to keep them from a bowl.

Missouri has been a solid team…the only Big 12 team to win a Cotton Bowl in the last 10 years. They’ll be fine.

Duff, I don’t see your point. I was talking about Big 12 schools. What does it matter if they were in other conferences before the Big 12?

As far as old vs new, I don’t see how that’s relevant. Everything I’ve been talking about in all my posts was about all time numbers. For some reason you think that nothing counts before the 70s or something. I disagree. I think they played the sport back then and those titles count too.

So if Connecticut, Cincinnati and West Virginia are the big losers in the 2010-2014 era of expansion, who are the winners?

In what world is WVU a loser? Sure they are on an island, but is still projected to make $6 million more than they would in the ACC (a number that will expand when the play starts and they get Sugar Bowl money) and keep their third tier rights.

(Meanwhile you didn’t even mention USF…)

As for winners? At least compared to where they were in 2009 the biggest winners are (in order)

1. Utah
2. TCU

(Moderate Drop)

3. Rutgers
4. BYU

(Massive drop)

5. Colorado
6. Missouri

(Drop)

7. Nebraska
8. aTm (could move into a tie pending how much the SEC Network ends up being worth)

I’m comparing to where they were in 2009. Remember, the PAC not only added 2 schools, they also added a CCG (that is why I have the Big Ten over the SEC even though I’m not sure UNL, Maryland and Rutgers are anymore valuable than aTm and Mizzou).

I think the B1G filled some needs. They expanded into some really good, east coast markets and recruiting grounds. Plus they added a king in Nebraska (although they probably could’ve used another football prince). Plus they got their CCG.

The SEC also filled some needs with much needed markets and AAU schools. Plus I consider aTm to be a football prince (they have the potential to be on at least).

Looking at the PAC, I think the only good they really got out of it was their CCG. Yeah they theoretically added the Denver & SLC markets, but I still have my reservations about how much interest those markets have in college athletics. I do think that they hurt their overall athletic product though.

In terms of TV $, the Pac and Big 12 were the big winners. They gained a lot of ground on the rest. Most anyone leaving the BE was a big winner.

I would disagree about BYU being a winner. They are in bowl and mid-season scheduling purgatory. They have a lot more exposure and a little more money, but they have issues, especially with the WAC’s disintegration.

Colorado was solid academic addition and culturally seems to fit the PAC so I can see that as a positive even if the sports teams were not at the top. Big state flagship in a section of the country with limited options probably helps more than it appears.

The B1G was a significant winner. It’s now the predominant football conference of 14 states plus D.C. and lower NY state, a footprint with just over 100 million people. It’s essentially captured a new area–the Mid-Atlantic, minus Virginia–without overextending its boundaries either geographically or culturally.

And although some would disagree with this, I think the ACC GOR is another win for the B1G, as it kept it from adding some bad fits that ultimately might have led to the conference’s undoing.

Yeah, as a Pac fan and alum, the general fan view was the programs added are weak, but a fair trade off for the massive increase in money we got. And hope that Colorado can get back to where they were, which should happen, it’s the main state school in a decent size but growing and economically strong state with a good media market. And Utah got us to 12…

@frug – I think that list generally looks pretty good. The only change that I would make is to have BYU move to the Pitt/Syracuse/Louisville/WVU tier. Their TV contract situation has turned out to be a positive, but they’ve also seen rival Utah move to *much* greener pastures in the Pac-12 and the tradeoff of going independent for football was to downgrade from the MWC to the WCC (outside of Gonzaga) for basketball and other sports. BYU is better off overall today compared to 2010 and I think independence can work for them in a way that it can’t for 99% of other schools, but it would have taken an invite to the Big 12 or Pac-12 (the latter of which will never happen for cultural reasons) to really have given them a massive jump.

The main reason I put BYU as high as I did is because the MWC had a terrible TV deal even for a mid-major and FB independence gives them national exposure that they prioritize. Had they taken the Big XII offer they would have competed with Utah for the top spot, but as is, if you want to slide them down to the Colorado/Missouri level I wouldn’t argue too much.

Baltimore and DC are big markets, but U Md doesn’t own them. I grew up in Md suburbs of DC – everyone there were Georgetown fans, not Md fans. And those are pro markets, not college markets. They’re Redskins, Ravens, Orioles and Nationals fans, then Hoyas, Wizards and Capitals, then another drop to Maryland. College football not really on the radar except for alumni.

@ES – My perception and what I have seen in ratings data for DC is that while it’s a pro sports market, it also isn’t like Boston or arguably NYC where college sports are completely ignored. DC seems very similar to Chicago, where the sheer concentration of power conference alumni makes it into at least a market that can be delivered in theory. It’s not a college sports town like Birmingham or Atlanta, but there’s still a legit college sports presence there. Besides, any market worth owning is a pro sports market at some level, so I’ve always found that to be a too quick retort for expansion skeptics.

I’m really struggling to see how a Nebraska/Rutgers/Maryland combo is stronger than a Missouri/A&M combo. I guess just by virtue of it bieng 3 schools vs 2, and allowing a championship game vs not doing that, is an argument.

But then the SEC doubled their number of AAU schools, while the B1G went from being 100% AAU to only 93% AAU.

There is more data to compare those arguments for the Big Ten, however. There are at least a few pre-Nebraska and pre-Maryland/Rutgers years to see what kind of effect they actually have. Whereas whatever guaranteed payout the SEC is offered from a split ownership deal will reflect all 14 programs. We won’t know exactly how they came up with whatever they offered.

Nice link and work. I was only slightly in the category of FranktheTank commentariat, liked the idea of FSU and maybe Va despite the geographical nightmare FSU would encounter in such a BIG. But I often got sickened by many BIG fans with dollar signs in their foolish heads vs respect for cultural-historical togetherness. Shame on many of these fellow BIG fans, esp those fantasizing over 18-20 team leagues at the big-time expense of the ACC. Jesus, these fans have never been in ACC country long enough to understand the ties that bind that conference. They never bothered to do some self-examination and perhaps hypothesize OSU, Michigan, leaving the BIG for the ACC – a ridiculous prospect when applied inwards. I say those two because UNC’s prestige & influence is similar to OSU and Michigan in the BIG.

In the end, if (big “if”) super conferences are the end game – I stand firm that the Big12 is the conference at greatest risk, in large part because of geography, which is not to be understated – ever – in present or future expansion talk. The Big12 is at the crossroads of the BIG, SEC and Pac12. If the BIG has to go to 18, set aside the AAU angle and grab UConn, KU, OU and Tx – basketball and football money will never be an issue again. UConn and OU, especially the former, will be AAU in due time. Word is UConn could be AAU within the next few years. Tx, OU, and KU will reunite with Neb and make a BIG West football division quite formidable & certainly competitive against the future BIG East, adding two of football’s 10 great rivalries: OU-Neb, OU-Tx. KU and UConn will give the BIG a basketball boost that puts us on par or above the future ACC, above if strictly counting NCs and FFs. There will only be slight breakup in geography – the 60 mile break between Conn and NJ – hardly noticeable unless you break out a magnifying glass. And most importantly, two of those schools: UConn and KU would not have the Md issue – they would embrace BIG membership at a super majority level. OU and Tx, not so much, but together they would go for the BIG if they knew the Big12 was ion shaky ground.

Nonetheless, I’m fine with the future 14 – a lot of upside, long term, with Rutgers and Md. I like the idea of a BIG eastern bloc that reminds me of the AFC North & I like the academic history both these schools offer.

Do some research on UConn getting AAU membership. They are close. Conn is one of best k-12 education states. UConn has already soared into the top 63 of US News Undergraduate schools – which places higher than a handful of BIG schools, same metric. They’re investing mucho bucks into graduate programs, which are the more important measurement for AAU status. They are the sole flagship of Conn – their chances are quite good.

When the GOR expires, ACC is still the one most at risk. Their schools can be more valuable elsewhere, at least the VA/NC/SC/FL core. But the landscape will look a lot different in a dozen years. I’m not going to try to predict what will happen.

Indisputably big winners in their own right: Xavier, Creighton, and especially Butler (for going from a now crumbling Horizon League to an A-10 at height of its power to being in the same league with Georgetown, Villanova, St. John’s. There’s no better conference for a school without an FBS football program than the new Big East. They’re now officially power conference programs and were considered mid-majors by most observers just a few years ago.

App State and other schools who moved up to the FBS level are winners; remains to be seen whether they’re actually moving to the highest Division or whether they’re going to one that ultimately results as one in between the FCS and a new, broken-away Division reserved only for the power conferences.

Losers: the former Big East/AAC, C-USA, Sun Belt, and WAC , especially. NMSU got a life raft for football in the SB, but was way better off when WAC had Hawaii, Boise, Nevada, Fresno, and La. Tech instead of Grand Canyon University & co.

Could be winner or loser depending on whether glass is half full or half empty: schools joint AAC who expected higher payout; Catholic 7 who will miss Syracuse, Louisville, Pitt, ND, and UConn but now control own destiny; ACC, which lost a founding member and has an under-market TV contract but staved off large scale raids; Big 12, which lost 4 schools but still has UT and OU.

Moving up to FBS is not necessarily being a winner. App. St. and Georgia Southern are going from a big fish in a little pond to a tiny fish in the ocean. Some of the others like Georgia State may be terrible in FBS and drop in attendance. All remains to be seen on those schools even if FBS doesn’t split.

If you see WV as a sucker in the move to the Big12, you must be a glass is half empty kind of guy. On the glass is half full side, they stayed in the Major Conference landscape when the conference they escaped from dropped down.

@BruceMcF – Very true. West Virginia HAD to make that move to the Big 12 at the time. They would still make that move today if they were stuck in the AAC (as would any other school in the Gang of Five).

I have a REALLY hard time seeing anyone getting a PAC invite in almost any scenario. Everyone outside of LA demands as much LA access as possible and any invite inevitably dilutes this for some to all of the current schools. For a major program (like Texas) it’s less of a problem, but this was (along with academics) the primary reason the league was lukewarm at the OK/OK St pair when it came up a while back.

And if the league was lukewarm at that pair, there’s no reason whatsoever to think that it’s even semi-plausible they’d be interested in mid-majors like UNM and UNLV. And Hawaii is basically those two programs plus a logistical train wreck, being multiple time zones away.

+1 on ccrider re: SD St. The CA schools, especially the LA ones, would revolt (and I’m pretty sure 4 “no” votes would kill any expansion). Moreover, USC publicly floated the idea of independence during the last round of logistical negotiations; the current Pac-12 agreement ( http://compliance.pac-12.org/tools/handbook.html ) only lasts until 2024 (“No member shall deliver a notice of withdrawal to the Conference in the period beginning on July 24, 2011, and
ending onAugust 1, 2024″), which isn’t all that long in the larger scheme of things. The idea that the non-CA members would risk someone like USC (much less all the CA’s) walking just to bring in someone like SD St is non-sensical.

UCB Na UCLA admins about had a seizure over the conference allowing Cal St’s Fullerton and Bakersield as associate members in wrestling. Don’t recall the same angst over UC Davis’ inclusion.
Think Hatfields and McCoys.
What market does SDSU bring that USC and UCLA don’t already?
Enjoy being at 12.
If the B1G can/is actually considering JHU, could/should the PAC explore Rice for non athletic performance (baseball excepted) reasons? A SW Stanford.

Any Pac-12 expansion has to include Central Texas in some form or other, since the only way to resolve the LA access issue is to have another big cluster of media markets and recruiting grounds in the conference.

Which leaves Pac-12 expansion until the expiration date of the Big12 GOR comes closer. The basic demographics are not going to change enough to change the underlying pull of Central Texas, but that does allow time for things to change in the market as well as allow time for some program building.

BYU controls their future with reasoning sports fans can’t grasp.
Boise is doing a junior version of UT. Have their own TV deal and exert undue influence in the MWC merely by their presence or absence.

@only1halen – I don’t think getting UNC into the Big Ten was any more of a failure than getting Notre Dame or Texas into the league – they were always going to be extremely difficult to pry away, if not impossible. UVA also would have likely stayed tied to UNC no matter what. The only question that I have in my mind is whether the Big Ten had a chance to poach schools like Florida State and/or Miami yet passed them over (whether it was for geographic reasons, lack of AAU status, etc.). That had the biggest potential of being a game changer if it was settled that UNC and ND were never going to move.

Andy, you have been corrected multiple times on here and I’ll freaking do it again: Kansas is nowhere close to losing its AAU status. Quit lying about it, and if you want to talk about profitablity, KU has consistently been in the top 3 of the Big12’s unbalanced revenue distribution.

Imagining KU in the B1G, they could do very well with B1G Network basketball programming. If the game isn’t big enough to be on ESPN it’ll be on the BTN, and that is what the B1G wants. KU is consistently in the top 25 of college merchandise sales.

Cookie Monster, yes, you have “corrected me” multiple times, never with a smidgen of evidence.

Fact: basketball has not been a driver in conference realignment thus far.

Fact: KU is awful at football and would have one of the lowest attendances in the B1G.

Fact: KU is in the bottom 2 or 3 in the AAU in USNews academic rankings and would be the lowest ranked school in the B1G.

Fact: AAU is largely based on research dollars and ku does the least research of any AAU school.

Fact: Nebraska has already been kicked out of the AAU and Kansas’s numbers and rankings are basically the same as Nebraska’s.

Kansas will not be joining the Big Ten. It will not happen. And that’s as it should be considering Kansas made such a huge obnoxious stink about Missouri “betraying” and “abandoning” the Big 12. If that’s the case then Kansas should be eternally loyal to the Big 12. And if not then they should get over this butthurt against MU and go ahead and start playing us already. It was the most played series west of the Mississippi and 2nd most played overall. The fact that we’re not playing right now is all on Kansas and is easily remedied. Mizzou would probably cancel any non-conference game on our schedule and play you in 2013 the minute you agreed to it.

As a jayhawker, you’d just better hope that Texas sees fit to keep you around one way or another because your fate is completely tied to them. Thank God Missouri is not in your boat.

anticipating some reply knocking Missouri’s academics. Yes, Missouri’s USNews ranking wasn’t so great this year at 97. It was 86 a year or two ago, it goes up and down. KU was at 106 this year, so a bit behind MU. But Missouri doesn’t have much to crow about when it comes to USNews rankings.

But in research Missouri’s not nearly as bad off. Missouri has a fairly good medical school, ranked top 20 in some categories. On the strength of that their competitively won federal research dollars ranked #69 in the latest rankings. Not great, but still better than 7 or 8 other AAU schools, including Kansas, who ranked pretty much at the bottom of the AAU and outside of the top 100 nationally. If KU doesn’t clean that up then it’s absolutely possible for them to get kicked out of the AAU. It happened to Nebraska. But don’t take my word for it…

Total research: Kansas rank: 117, Missouri rank: 77 (and that’s just Columbia, not counting the other med school at UMKC, the Engineering school at UMR, or any research done at UMSL)
(see page 32 of the report)

Fact is the Missouri President is the only one who has made any comment about worrying about keeping its AAU status. He says they’re safe for now. Its likely that Missouri and Kansas are both in that bottom 5 or 6 in the rankings the AAU used when they kicked out Nebraska.

Well, the other division does have Nebraska, who has only been in the Big Ten for 2 years longer than Maryland/Rutgers. That being said, Nebraska feels like more of a fit to me, especially when put with teams like Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota. Plus, they are obviously way more interesting to play in general than either the terps or the scarlet knights.

“Well, the other division does have Nebraska, who has only been in the Big Ten for 2 years longer than Maryland/Rutgers. That being said, Nebraska feels like more of a fit to me, especially when put with teams like Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota. Plus, they are obviously way more interesting to play in general than either the terps or the scarlet knights.”

I consider NE and PSU a wash. PSU has been around longer but NE is a better fit. Both are kings so they bring a decent level of interest.

@Big Ten Fan – Absolutely. The call for geographically aligned divisions was strong even in a 12-team setup and it becomes increasingly more desirable as you go up to 14. I enjoy thinking of different ways to shift pods as a mental exercise, but I don’t think the Big Ten has any desire to do that. Personally, I’m definitely in favor of the new divisional alignment.

Realignment and consolidate have been going on for decades. There is no reason to think that realignment/consolidation has come to an end. In my view, this is at most a few-year-pause.

As we’ve said many times on this blog, the Chancellors and Presidents are thinking in 20-year and 50-year increments. The ACC schools were not ready to move yet; we’ll see where things are in 5-7 years.

One way to look at both the Big12 and ACC grant of rights is to punt to see what the 2020’s media market is going to look like. since at this point in time its mostly speculation ~ too much money is locked into institutions and technologies that are going to be under pressure, and too little money is flowing through the institutions and technologies that are going to be 1/4 or more of the market in a decade’s time, to be even be able to tell with any confidence WHERE the biggest changes are going to be.

Now that the madness is finally over, we can clearly identify the biggest winners and losers. In descending order of magnitude, then…

Winners:
1. Schools that moved from non-power conference to power football conference (Utah, TCU) – began the game without a football chair and wound up with one
2. Notre Dame – stepped up in class in their non-football sports, solidified independent football status for 10-15 years, wound up making about as much money as anyone
3. Schools that moved from a BCS conference to a better power conference (Colorado, Nebraska, Pitt, Syracuse, Maryland, Rutgers, Missouri, Texas A&M, Louisville) – had somewhere between a mediocre and teetering chair, wound up somewhere between a solid and golden chair
4. West Virginia – technically they are part of group 3, but winding up as a huge geographic outlier in their new league puts them slightly behind the rest of them
5. Lesser lights outside of SEC/B1G who remained as part of power conferences (Washington St, Oregon St, Baylor, Iowa St, Kansas St, Oklahoma St, Texas Tech, Wake Forest, Boston College) – could have easily lost their chair and had no control over it, but got lucky in the end
6. New members of new Big East (Butler, Creighton, Xavier) – moved up in class, but basketball only so impact is smaller
7. Smaller old members of new Big East (St John’s, Seton Hall, Providence, DePaul, Marquette) – remained in a relatively relevant basketball conference when they could have been totally cast aside into a definitive mid-major category

Losers:
1. Old Big East Teams stuck in the AAC aka the old Big East (UConn, Cincinnati, South Florida) – had a football chair at the beginning of the game, but lost it. Definitely the major losers of this whole thing. Honestly UConn is the probably the biggest individual loser considering where they were a few years ago in football/basketball, and that they made a big investment to move up into major college football not too long ago.
2. Bigger old members of new Big East (Georgetown, Villanova) – got bumped down a bit from a true power conference to something in between a power conference and a mid-major, putting their ongoing status as a basketball power in doubt
3. Traditional football superpowers in weakest power conferences (Texas, Oklahoma, Florida St) – despite being big boys in the football game, wound up outside the biggest money. Still in pretty good shape, but ceded some ground to SEC and B1G schools.

1: Utah yes, TCU sorta, returned to SWC level (recovered what was lost)

5: By your logic, the lower “value” schools in every conference are permenantly at risk.
There has only been one D1 school ever kicked from a conference, and not a power conference. The PAC schools were not at risk. OkST and TT had big brother cover, that would have only been necessary if B12 collapsed. ACC only lost one member to a king conference, same one that claimed UNL. I always felt their obituary was being writ way early. None were actually at risk, even if a few other schools had defected.

I think you’re right about the PAC schools. The basic thought was that outside of the two big kahunas (B1G and SEC), any of the lesser lights are – if not permanently at risk – just simply not in control of their own destiny in any kind of meaningful way. I still think that’s true vis-a-vis Washington St and Oregon St, but the geographic constraints probably save them from the seas really turning against them.

That said, I’m not sure the fact that there isn’t a history of schools getting kicked out of the club is particularly instructive. The economics of all of this have become fundamentally different, and every single player is beholden to a much more volatile business cycle than ever before. Volatility creates collateral damage, and if this round turned out to weaken the ACC further, it doesn’t take much to see the eventual loss of a football chair for any who remained there without any better options (and I say this as a self-aware Syracuse fan). Once you accept that premise, the rest are just logical extensions from there.

A century of history, and it consistently, through world wars, recessions, depressions, the rise and fall of particular sports popularity and their national governing bodies, shows the power conferences don’t boot schools. I’m supposed to disregard that and go all “chicken little” because of a potential future change in a particular dynamic involving athletes, but not the university overall?

Weaken the ACC further? I’d suggest that the reality losing Maryland bringing home the desirability of schools in the ACC has caused them to firm up, to take the missing step allows them to become as stable as the big three. Losing Maryland by itself was the best thing for the ACC as it stimulated concrete action. Five years ago who would have pictured ND signing even a limited GOR in the ACC?

Well, yes. The lower value schools in a league are ALWAYS at risk. It’s hard to drop a school but much easier to blow up a league (see the effective demotions of the WAC-16, Mountain West and AAC when power programs walked away).

I was referring to the top conferences. It’s just hard to kill one of them. See: all the ACC obituaries of the last few months, but they lost only one and have more joiners. BEast was the most dysfunctional and killed itself, and took its time doing it. Rasputin of the plains still lives. Only it’s creation reveals the method to exclude current membership. A conference must die, or two join to avoid that possibility for either/both. Now that the ACC is on solid ground that scenario is removed.

I think its really the lower tier schools in the Big12 and ACC in particular who can be classed as winners for not getting the drop, since so far as we’ve seen, a lower tier school in a power conference gets the drop by virtue of its whole conference being downgraded.

I actually think a school that was a bigger winner than given credit for is Baylor (They are ahead of Utah, because despite the increased revenue, the Utes basically are uncompetitive in the PAC). When the process started, the Bears were the bottom of the Big XII. Then they came close to losing everything (If Texas etc would have moved to the PAC), now they are on the rise, starting with RGIII, and with a new on-campus Stadium coming in next year, things are good in Waco. Boston College is actually not a winner. They are playing Notre Dame less than before in football, their sports programs (Except Hockey) are awful, and the facilities are worse. If they don’t upgrade they will eventually be in the same position as Iowa St.

Texas and OU ARE making the biggest money. They make more TV money than anyone else in the country. Texas got a $15 million contract for Tier 3. OU got $7 million for their additional Tier 3. And the Tier I/II contract averages are within $1 million/school of the Pac 12 and also, for the time being, within $1 million of the B1G Tier I/II/III and ahead of the SEC. Bowlsby said the Big 12 would probably be making more in 2014 than the SEC and one of the SEC officials said he might well be right.

As for FSU, like Texas and OU, they made their choice. Not clear if FSU could have gotten in B1G. There’s little doubt they could have gotten in Big 12 if they wanted. Hard to call someone a loser who has alternatives.

OU is receiving something pushing $7M, but its not only tier 3 television content. It includes other marketing and advertising rights that Learfield also runs for other schools. Iowa is receiving $7M from Learfield without any tier 3 TV content. OSU receives $11M from IMG for non-tv content.

We really need a better way to compare non tier 1 and 2 income than using nebulous terms that don’t mean the same thing from school to school. It’s hard to believe OU makes half what Iowa, or a third OSU do.

I am a Utah and Pac 12 fan and I am glad that the pac 12 is in a good position (Utah has a good deal) but I can’t help but think that they really missed the boat and that they will now always be 2 teams smaller than the big and the sec (I don’t care the ACC will have two more). I think that these decisions are 100 year decisions and the school presidents weren’t looking at the opportunity cost of not expanding and having less money than it’s competitors and now it seems too late to do anything. I like this article http://blogs.mercurynews.com/collegesports/2011/09/21/did-the-pac-12-risk-its-future-by-not-expanding/
It is older but it is interesting looking at writers predictions that the big would make a lot more money than the pac 12 because they would expand into new TV markets. In the comments because people were disagreeing with the author that the big would not expand from 12 and they did. I wonder what you have to say about this.

If the PAC did pass on the Oklahoma schools (and I believe they did) then they really screwed the pooch. Not only would they have strengthened themselves, they would have mortally wounded a competitor. Plus, within 2 years they would have had at least a 50/50 shot at Texas and been left with no worse than a KU/KSU pair, which kicks the crap out of any combination of New Mexico, UNLV, Nevada and Boise St. It also would have given them the Central Time Zone exposure they need.

And then they managed to make things even worse by killing the PAC/B1G alliance…

Bailing on the B1G alliance seems like the real “rue the day” moment. That said, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if it comes back in the next few years. The more that TV money moves to the forefront, the more that good home and homes become better (or at least less bad) financially than bodybags, and the more that it makes sense to revive that arrangement. If/when there’s another 1-A split, it becomes a true no-brainer move.

The GOR may start immediately, but in the ACC bylaws anything voted on does not start until the Jan 1 the next year. Maryland is using this clause to get out of paying 50 mil exit fee and only pay 20 because they left in November. So no matter what THe B1G can poach anyone until next year.

Once that happens, the B10 could try to bring on board most of the non-Ivy, non-big5 AAU research universities that are still independent (biggest gets being JHU, BU, and NYU, but possibly Rice, Stony Brook and many of the egghead eight: CMU, CWRU, WashU, Emory; maybe Tulane; Rice, Emory, and Tulane would give the B10 southern exposure/outreach with their alums as well) as single-sport members.

Interestingly, if you look at the additions to the current big 5 conferences since the 60’s, the B10 is the only one to have added no more than 1 school from any other conference (which I believe Delany had said was a goal of expansion; they did not want to kill of any conferences).

The B10, SEC, and Pac have added 4 schools each (and have lost none). In 2025, these will still be the most impregnable conferences.

The ACC has lost 2 and added 8/9. They are not as stable. 6 schools together since the ’60’s.

The B12/B8/SWC has added/lost/left behind a bunch (5 schools together since the 60’s).

Interestingly, if you look at the additions to the current big 5 conferences since the 60′s, the B10 is the only one to have added no more than 1 school from any other conference (which I believe Delany had said was a goal of expansion; they did not want to kill of any conferences).

That’s just a coincidence, not a grand plan. Is there any real doubt that Delany wanted UVA and UNC? They would have broken your rule, for sure. He just didn’t manage to get them.

And I certainly think he considered others, and if he didn’t take them, it was only because the Big Ten’s parochial needs took them in another direction.

– ND was so determined to avoid the B1G (which they view as the plague) that they’ve actually signed a Grant of Right with…the ACC. Yes, Virginia (no pun intended), they’ve actually joined a conference! :D

– The ACC is stuck with Boston College, Wake Forest and an uncertain football program at Miami from here on.

Somebody might believe it, but more to the point there’s no reason to believe it. The only reason to believe it are those who believe that signing a Grant of Rights means that they “joined” a conference.

But Notre Dame WERE members of the Big East (other than FB) and WILL BE members of the ACC (other than FB) so of course as members of the conference (other than FB) they had to sign the grant of rights … for almost all of their sports (other than FB).

For basketball and whatever else (other than FB) may be of some minor interest to some network … Lacrosse, maybe? … of COURSE they were happy to sign the GOR.

Was it the Dude, Tuxedo Yoda or MHver3 that said the Big12 would take Central Florida and South Florida if they can’t get Miami and/or Florida state? Whoever it was, that may be the only option for the Big 12 now!

Are there any chances now that the Big Ten would consider other options than 2 static divisions strictly according to geography for a 14-team conference?

I can’t imagine why. After Legends/Leaders flopped with the public, I the Big Ten wants to do something simple that everyone understands. The ACC and the SEC are doing the same. There is no need to do something more elaborate and complicated.

I’m curious about the Big 12 though. IIRC, They’re the only conf. that doesn’t tie up *all* their games into their GOR; their 3rd tier rights are still controlled by the individual schools. This makes for an interesting play for Texas… It’d be far-fetched but here’s the scenario:

1) LHN continues its carriage struggles. ESPN realizes it’s facing a 20 year slow bleed on this project and approaches Texas to either re-negotiate payouts or kill/merge the network.
2) Texas decides to kill its network as it could probably get more money from selling the 3rd tier rights to existing channels (including potentially back to ESPN).
3) The sole reason for Texas being in the Big 12 (the ability to start its own network) is now gone, which means Texas could start looking for a better conf
4) the BTN, SEC, and Pac-12 networks are successful with nationwide coverage.
5) All of a sudden, those 3 crappy Texas games become much more valuable to BTN/SEC/PAC as they attempt to crack the Texas TV market (SEC already has a&m but could massively increase carriage fees if they carry UT too)

If you consider that the GOR essentially means you lose 3-4 UT home games while you gain 4-5 UT ‘away’ games that are now played in your conference (if UT joins your conference), plus 2-3 3rd tier UT home games, someone like the BTN or PAC might actually come out ahead if they could package those games (2-3 3rd tier + 4-5 ‘away’ games within your conf) into a carriage deal for the state of Texas.

So you have 2 potential scenarios:

1) UT actually leaves the Big 12 and joins the BIG (for example). Their new conference gets 4-5 away games played with BIG opponents in addition to the 3rd tier games that UT already controls. The downside is UT forfeits their share of the Big 12 media contract.

2) UT nominally stays within the Big 12, but sells its 3rd tier rights to BTN plus agrees to play its non-conference games with BIG opponents. Thus UT keeps its Big 12 media revenue, and gets a reduced share of BTN revenue.

Either scenario, if it allows the BTN (or the PAC or SEC) to get carriage rights in Texas, would probably be a net win-win for both the conference and for Texas. And in 13 years when the GOR expires, UT becomes a full conference member.

UT is probably the only school from the Big 12 that this scenario would work for (even if OK could bring along the state for your cable network, it wouldn’t be a big enough boost to be worth losing TV rights to most of the home games), and the only marquee name big enough that a conference like the BTN or PAC could potentially make an oddball deal like this for. But it could work…

Anyway, I think I’m just keeping the hope alive as frank seems determined to make all us re-alignment junkies go cold turkey and actually watch sports for the pleasure of the game itself or some nonsense like that :-)

I understand how it worked out. It was a posted comment I read at the time that bowtie himself told Scott (while telling Scott thanks, but no thanks for the invite) he had been informed UT still planed to do their own channel, bully it through after they were too far in to cancel the move to 16. Perhaps just aggie talk? Not necessarily beyond belief.

thanks for the hope I don’t like how it has ended, I just don’t understand how florida state would sign a gor. I mean from a business standpoint it just doesn’t make sense. Anyway just keep giving me hope lol.

Frank and I agreed the ACC would be harder to crack but most of my logic was based on ESPN than any genius move by Swofford. Look at the winners and losers by TV affiliation.

B1G
#1 Nebraska is a BTN goldmine and went from FOX to FOX
#2 Maryland has more value to the BTN and cuts away “cancer” from ESPN
#3 Rutgers will have most value to BTN and least to FOX or ESPN

ACC
#1 Notre Dame – sure they are IND in football but the ACC got what the Big East could not from the Irish and over time that 5 game contract can easily go to full membership. If the Irish go another generation in football obscurity they will fit right in with the other ACC football schools. The added plus for ESPN was getting an ACC team deep in the heart of the B1G footprint. This alone may make ESPN the biggest winner. The wild card is Notre Dame basketball. If the men win, it is just gravy to ESPN and the women have been beating Uconn on a regular basis so look for a shift from the Huskies to the Irish and ESPN’s influence as their “safe” hedge.
#1a Louisville – The Cardinals were the hidden gem in all of this and they may indeed be the key to ACC basketball survival. The ACC / ESPN now has a solid wedge in both Men’s and Women’s basketball right between a resurgent Indiana and Kentucky but where they really get the boost is YUM Center. As one of the biggest and newest venues the ACC stays in the mix if basketball moves back to the real heart of basketball and away from the Tobacco Road we have been fed for the last 20 years. With an athletic budget of around 90 million dollars the Cardinals will be #1 in the ACC when they join. For comparison UNC will be #2 and they are at least 10 – 20 million below that number and that is with the ACC media deal while the Cards have been only receiving the Big East one. The bonus here will be Cardinal Football which gives the ACC a winning team sandwiched right between IU and UK football. If 10 – 20 years from now Louisville has one of the most valuable football programs in the ACC – behind say Florida State and Notre Dame – just remember you read it here first. 2 generations ago Cardinal football was a crappy job. This past generation they have been a stepping stone job. Could the next generation see them become a solid coaching job [say Top 20 – Top 30 job]?
#2 Syracuse – similar to Louisville but with a much older infrastructure and a more removed population in their home footprint. Adding Louisville and Syracuse gives the ACC 3 of the 5 top attendance numbers (60%) and 3 of 4 schools averaging over 20,000 fans per game (75%) with Kentucky being the only non ACC school to average over 20,000 per game. In football the Orange have a dusty old MNC from 1959 but even that lone title exceeds the majority of the ACC schools since WW II. Adding Syracuse helps the northern flank of the ACC better than Boston College and that in the end was probably what ESPN wanted.
#3 Pittsburgh – If Maryland and Rutgers are build outs for the BTN them Pitt may be the same for ESPN and the ACC. They have a strong heritage in football that dwindled when Penn State had JoPa and B1G membership. Not saying they will surpass Happy Valley anytime soon but it is a cheap hedge by ESPN to get a chunk of the PA market which is still one of the biggest states in the USA.

Big 12
#1 Texas – granted they did not move but ESPN now owns them while the rest of the conference is FOX. While the LNH has been a short term financial failure my thought has always been that it really was an ESPN subsidy to keep the longhorns from FOX control
#2 West Virginia – move from ESPN to FOX probably was not a big deal either way
#3 TCU – even less of a deal for ESPN

PAC
#1 Colorado – ESPN gets a part of any upside at less cost in the new PAC deal
#1a Utah – same as above but like WUV and TCU probably not big money

SEC – ESPN strikes gold
#1 Texas A&M – ESPN now owns #1 and #2 in Texas which makes them the biggest winner in the realignment sweepstakes. CA was already PAC, NY did not have a dominate team, and FL was already owned by ESPN via the ACC and SEC. This left on TX in the Big 4 sweepstakes and ESPN dominated FOX on this one. In one fell swoop they got #1 and hedged the bet by getting #2 as well so years from now when the realignment saga is studied in school this will be the key metric.
#2 Missouri – Subtle win by ESPN as the Tigers were a single state school [like Maryland and Rutgers] in a border war state. While it may take time to mine the Saint Louis and Kansas City markets it has shut FOX out of them on the football front. If ESPN was hedging their bets in basketball for a contender in those markets against the Jayhawks then they may have gotten them cheap. If not they have at least stopped FOX from owning a key border state

Big East – the Ace Rothstein play
At the end of the movie “Casino” the DeNiro character survives and continues to make money money for the mob. When I see the new Big East this is my best description for the Big East and ESPN.

One quibble – I’ve always thought that the Big Ten/Fox alignment was overstated. While ESPN’s relationships with the ACC and SEC are deeper down the lower tiers, remember that the top-rated ABC/ESPN college football (and increasingly basketball) games are generally from the Big Ten. They get the first pick of Big Ten games in the way they don’t with the SEC. I’d be shocked if that setup didn’t largely continue in the next TV contract. We might see a package of games on Fox, but neither ESPN nor the Big Ten can really afford to sever ties. I think the Big Ten and SEC have moved to a status that’s at least on par with the NBA and MLB in terms of bargaining power – they can make or break a network, which means that ESPN will likely pay the Big Ten enough to ensure that they don’t prop up another competitor.

Nebraska was a home run at the national level but Rutgers and Maryland will be good on the lower levels. At the upper levels it is ESPN / FOX / CBS but the real value of the Terps and Rutgers will be realized at the BTN level which is all FOX. I agree with you on the top level but was looking more at the conference network level. At that point….

Going back to our earliest discussions on here about carriage rates affecting conference income the B1G and SEC were the real winners which is probably as it should be considering they top attendance numbers in most sports.

I don’t think B1G wants to sever ESPN ties totally. And Delany will probably be retired in the next couple of years, before the TV contract, so the ego thing related to BTN won’t be there.

I also think the ESPN/ACC ties were overrated. ESPN gets the best of the B1G, gets most of the SEC and half the Big 12. They have more inventory than they can use. If the ACC really is getting $20 million, they had to have given ESPN something. ESPN is anything but altruistic and they don’t need the ACC. And they would get plenty of all of those schools if they were in the B1G/SEC/Big 12.

From Bowlsby’s comments and SEC comments, both wanted the ACC to survive. The Big 12 wouldn’t have said no to FSU and the SEC wouldn’t have said no to UNC, but neither were real excited about expansion and both loathed the idea of the ACC being carved up. Somehow Swofford got UVA and FSU to stay. The rest were already on board or had no options.

Notre Dame – sure they are IND in football but the ACC got what the Big East could not from the Irish and over time that 5 game contract can easily go to full membership.

The only reason ND is in the ACC is because the ACC offered associate membership; the B1G did not. As Frank has noted repeatedly, ND was even willing to make less money, if it meant they could remain independent.

If ND decides to join a conference full-time, the ACC’s advantage dissipates, and the Irish might as well chase the money.

The point I was making is Notre Dame is no longer a true independent and 5 games a year is closer to 8 (62.5%) and 9 (55.6%) than 0. Both numbers cross the 50% threshold and was more than the Big East got from the Irish.

From the intangible aspect being in a school with many private schools probably fits the Irish better than a conference where Northwestern is the lone private school. My guess is long term the Irish are hooked even if the wedding does not take place for another decade or 2. When all these contacts are up in the 2020’s my guess is there will be no place for an IND school and I can not see the Irish in the SEC or the Big 12. The PAC is on the other coast and the B1G is a collection of big state schools. The ACC becomes the most comfortable landing spot.

My guess is long term the Irish are hooked even if the wedding does not take place for another decade or 2. When all these contacts are up in the 2020′s my guess is there will be no place for an IND school…

People have been making that same “guess” for a long time, and they’ve always been wrong.

Four of the five power conferences (all but the SEC), plus Navy, play ND regularly. If ND joins a conference full-time, many of those games can’t happen any more: there won’t be room for them on the schedule.

Since those schools clearly want to keep playing ND, none of them have any interest in changing the rules, such that ND is forced into a conference. Simply put: if ND joins a conference, ther’s one winner and many losers. That is why there will never be enough support to change the rules, so that ND can no longer be independent. If ND wants to remain independent, they will.

That makes it somewhat academic where they would choose to go, if for some odd reason they had a change of heart about independence. But I’d say if they’re forced to play 9 games in a league, they’re going to join the league that pays the most. None of this B.S. about where they’re more “comfortable.”

Obviously, they did make the concession to give the ACC five games a year, but many of those games are against traditional Irish opponents. The actual difference is only about 2 games a year, over and above what they would have scheduled anyway. They still get to play a national schedule, with most of their usual rivalries intact (all except Michigan). They’d lose that as full members of a conference.

I know they have been making that comment for ages but the move is to consolidation not IND expansion. Think of how many schools were IND at the dawn of the age of ESPN and how many are still IND today. I think Texas made a play to assert IND status in the future via the LHN and that has been a dismal failure. While guys in there 60’s and 70’s grew up in an era of Independent schools the guys that will be in their 60’s and 70’s twenty years from now will not have the same memories to draw from. The more time passes with only 1 major IND school the more opinions will sway in a direction that makes the Irish a team player and not a lone wolf.

At that point the only decision the Irish might have is if they want to be in a collective of public schools or a collective private ones. 20 years from now an IND core of Florida State, Penn State, Pittsburgh, Miami, Virginia Tech, and assorted other will be lost to data nobody reads. The Ivy League has the most MNC’s but what kid today under 20 knows or cares about it. Someday they will be TV executives or conference leaders making the big decisions and the Irish status won’t mean squat to them.

Hopefully by then the BTN will have added Toronto and B1G Ice Hockey will have grown. ;)

Seeing that the Big Ten appears to be the latest conference to adopt a nine-game conference schedule starting in 2016, there’s even less opportunity for a B1G school to play Notre Dame. Not only is there one fewer scheduling slot, but if a program looks to have seven home games per year, they’ll need to coordinate their conference schedule with the timing of the home-and-home with ND. Notre Dame dropped its series with Michigan and won’t be playing MSU on a regular basis (due in part to MSU wanting to play other major programs). Northwestern has a home-and-home with them (for now). The only B1G team with a long-term annual agreement with Notre Dame seems to be Purdue. There’s even an article in today’s newspaper with UM AD David Brandon talking about a ten-game B1G conference schedule.

The Pac 12 also has a nine-game conference schedule as well as the Big XII. Both conferences are in roughly the same boat vis-a-vis ND, but the big exception is there is a long-term agreement for USC and Stanford to play Notre Dame. Oklahoma has one more game on their home-and-home with ND and Texas has four games on the docket starting in 2015. That’s not to say it’s not a doable do, but realistically, how many P12 and Big XII teams are going to play ND outside of those four? Arizona State was supposed to play them, but had their game cancelled because of the five-game ACC requirement.

Given the five game agreement with the ACC, I think it’s fair to to classify Notre Dame as a semi-independent given their new situation. Add in the annual games with Navy and the desire to play on the west coast once per year (USC and Stanford) and ND is essentially locked into eight opponents per year. That means they only have four “open” scheduling slots going forward that they can work with at this time. The teams occupying those slots starting in 2014 are:

In essence, ND is a de facto conference member for football scheduling due to its arrangement with the ACC coupled with the annual games with USC, Stanford and Navy.

A couple other thoughts. You say that ND will play a lot of traditional Irish opponents in the ACC, but is that really true? You could point to Boston College, Pittsburgh and Syracuse, but do any of the 11 other schools really fit that mold? They’ve had some memorable games with Miami and Florida State in the past, but that doesn’t make them traditional football opponents. You could put Georgia Tech in there, but does anyone else really qualify as a traditional opponent in the new ACC?

Also let me know what a “national schedule” means? If ND has seven home games per year plus one with Purdue, then 2/3 of the scheduled games will be played in the state of Indiana. Add that occasional game with Michigan State or Northwestern and you have another matchup physically located square in the Midwest.

If you want to go by the opponent’s regions, you could break it down like this:

22 of the 36 games are with teams located on the East Coast. 6 apiece are in the Midwest (either Indiana, Illinois or Michigan) and 6 are in California. The two games with Texas are the only real outliers in their schedule.

So is this really a national schedule or one that’s heavily skewed to teams on the East Coast?

Not to look in the past but Notre Dame as the 12th team in the Big ten would have been perfect instead of Nebraska. They play eight big ten games. There teams they usually play are are listed here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notre_Dame_Fighting_Irish_football_rivalries. In a division of Penn State, Michigan, OSU, MSU, Purdue, and ND. They would play 3 big rivals and other teams they have played a lot. There cross division games are other teams they have played a lot: Northwestern, Iowa, Wisconsin, they would have played one or two every year. There schedule would be stronger. Then they would be able to play non conference games USC, Navy, Stanford. Then they still have one game for either Gerogia Tech, BC, Miami, Army, or air force.

@cutter: Notre Dame’s schedule is “national” in the sense it always was: not tied to any one conference, but far more eastern than western. Of ND’s top 20 most frequent opponents, only two are west of the Mississippi (USC and Stanford).

Their top 20 break out as: Big Ten (9); ACC (5); Service Academies (3); Pac-12 (2), plus one school (Carnegie Tech) that no longer plays in FBS. The five ACC teams in their top 20 doesn’t include FSU, whom they nevertheless are quite happy (and NBC is quite happy) to have on their schedule. The exact terms of the scheduling deal aren’t clear, but let’s just say I’d be really surprised if N. C. State gets them as often as Miami does.

There is no such thing as “quasi-independent.” They’re independent with a scheduling deal. They don’t count in the ACC standings and don’t qualify for their conference championship. Just as you can’t be half-pregnant, you can’t be half-independent. The Irish are independent. If you look at their past schedules, agreeing to play five ACC games isn’t as much of a concession as it appears, given that 2-3 of them would have been on the schedule most years in any case.

Now, if you look at all the schools around the country that have scheduled the Irish, and are happy to do so, you’ve gotta ask the simple question: who would vote to change the rules, so that the Irish can no longer be independent? It’s equivalent to asking who wants to give up those games, and the answer is nobody.

The fact is, athletic directors have nowhere near the animosity towards the Irish that opposing fans do. Even David Brandon, whom you quoted, seemed quite disappointed to be losing that game off of his schedule. Other schools want to play Notre Dame, because fans want to see them on TV. Even the fans that hate ND, tune in to root for them to lose. Until that changes, ND will be independent as long as it wants.

In terms of definitions, I look to the not so distant past when schools were independent from any conference for all sports, not just football. Notre Dame used to be that way until they joined the Big East, and now that they have a five-game football schedule deal with the ACC, the definition of them being a semi-independent is even more firm than ever.

The same goes for BYU, which by your definition, also enjoys a national schedule because their football team isn’t part of a conference. In fact, if you look at the geographic distribution of the teams on their schedule, I’d say the Cougars are a markedly more national team than the Fighting Irish.

Judging by the first three years of scheduling, it actually does appear that NC State will be on ND’s docket as much as Florida State. I have to tell you, I can’t imagine how much NBC is salivating over the idea of showing football games with Duke and Wake Forest. Of course, they do need content for their cable sports network, so that’ll be a happy ending right there (and let’s face it, those game are just a bit more compelling than Western Michigan and Tulsa). Then there’s those traditional ND rivals like Louisville, Clemson, North Carolina, Virginia Tech and Virginia. Has ND played those teams any more than a dozen times in their history? And, of course, if ND actually gets back to being good again, we can look forward to another forty-plus year win streak against Navy manifesting itself again.

I’m sure Temple, Massachusetts and Army are thrilled at the idea of playing Notre Dame. Goodness knows I just can’t wait to see those games. Arizona State, OTOH, is a little less thrilled at the moment seeing that ND broke the contract when the joined the ACC. At least ND holds Michigan in slightly higher regard than ASU. After all, Swarbrick handed Brandon that letter in person right before the game, whereas he didn’t have the cajones to call Arizona State’s AD in person. Let me tell you this–Savvy Jack is one classy guy. It’s just too bad he can’t get an SEC team on the docket.

By the way, did you actually take a look at Notre Dame’s ratings when they were bad during the Willingham-Davie-Weis years? I mean, it was like a downward pointing ski slope. Given the combination of inept football and some less than exciting opponents, it’s no wonder that NBC was giving away free air time during some of the ND broadcasts. At least Brandon knew one thing–make sure to play ND early in the season when the hype is in full force, because when the shine comes off Notre Dame, the ratings drop like a stone.

But to get back to point, nothing you’ve written forms an argument. ND’s schedule will be eastern-centric, not national. They’re not an independent as they were prior to joining the Big East–they’re a quasi-independent just like Brigham Young. Hell, the reason why they agreed to the five games with the ACC is that ND was having problems getting quality opponents in the latter part of the season. The Big Ten games were always in September. Navy and USC were later in the year. After that, it was mostly teams from the then Big East and ACC with a sprinkling of Mountain West teams. i think it’s been eight years since ND had a regular season game with a SEC team. Until they played Oklahoma last season, it’d also been a long time since they’d played a Big XII team (Nebraska in 2000/1 when Michigan rotated off the schedule for a two year period).

This is not a put down of Notre Dame, just an honest recounting of their circumstances regarding their schedules and their bowl game opportunities (essentially BCS or bust). Given the situation, Notre Dame did the best it could by joining the ACC. But let’s not sugar coat this–having to play five ACC teams per year is a concession ND had to make in contrast to their “verbal agreement” to play three Big East teams than never actually transpired.

I guess it all depends on how you want to classify U.S. Regions. Next year the Irish play teams from the Great Lakes/Midwest (Michigan, Purdue, Michigan State, Pitt), the Mid-Atlantic (Temple, Navy), Great Plains (Oklahoma), Southwest (ASU), the Rockies (Air Force, BYU), and the West Coast (Southern Cal and Stanford). With the exception of the South (where the SEC hates playing north of the Mason-Dixon after Oct. 1, and the ACC schedule not yet kicking in), and the Northeast, where else do they play major college football? The ACC agreement will get games in the South and the Northeast. It seems like the schedule is getting more national.

Historically, the schedule wasn’t ‘national’ so much as ‘more national than anyone else”. In the Rockne era, the tradition of playing games out east (Army, etc.) and ‘west’ (Nebraska, then USC) began. For comparison, Notre Dame is the only OOC opponent that Michigan has played more than 20 times that still plays big time football…and Michigan has played c. 134 seasons.

There are only 12 teams ND has played more than 25 times (approximately once every five years) and played in the last 20 years. This could theoretically be considered ND’s “traditional schedule”. Of those teams, 4 (Purdue, Michigan State, Michigan, Northwestern) are B1G, 3 are now ACC (Pitt, Georgia Tech, Miami FL), the three academies, and 2 are in the PAC 12 (USC, Stanford). Dividing them by region gives 5 in the Great Lakes/Midwest, 2 in the South, Army in the Northeast, Navy in the Mid-Atlantic, Air Force in the Rockies, and the California schools. Again, that seems pretty “national” to me.

@cutter ~ but Notre Dame football independence benefits from a scheduling agreement with a conference where they get to set home dates in the second half of the season. A four game scheduling agreement would be better for them than a five game scheduling agreement, so its basically one additional game with the ACC that they conceded in order to get the eastern exposure for their non-football sports.

Why would it be surprising? ND FB isn’t a conference member, or is a pseudo conference member with special considerations (only 5 games). ACC will need to rebuild the whole equality thing over time before it can be considered a standard again. Can’t see it until ND fully joins, or leaves.

Yes, Notre Dame is not a football member. So as long as the ACC distributes the Notre Dame games to ACC members on a share and share alike basis, there is no departure from share and share alike, and so no need to “rebuild” it.

@ Duffman: kudos on your post. as i’ve said many times, the competition among tv networks is a key driver to realignment.

I’d like to offer the BTN as the “winner” here rather than ESPN. In the three years since realignment/consolidation started up again, the BTN has solidified itself as a true national network that could actually complete with ESPN if it needed to. This happened while B1G football was down and SEC football was dominant.

i know that the BTN is 51% owned by FOX and I have often mashed the BTN and FOX together. however, I’m making an argument that, as a stand-alone entity, the BTN has been the big winner among the tv networks in this round of realignment. This assumes success in getting the BTN on basic cable in the DC/Baltimore markets, but not necessarily in the NYC market.

At level II only the SEC has a chance and as of today we just do not know what that will be. If TAMU and Missouri deliver market share that could be huge as there is not much population in the rest of the SEC but it could take a decade or more to develop. In the meantime the B1G will be earlier in signing the new agreement when the current one expires. I think we are on the same page but was hoping this clarified my intent better.

Yes, I agree. I’d add that I guess I am positing the idea that the BTN has positioned itself to be a Level I player (even aside from its part-ownership by FOX) if it wanted to be/needed to be.

As of today, I agree that the BTN is Level II. But there is easy potential for the BTN to become a Level I player and it revolves around realignment.

Think of it this way. If the B1G and ACC merged, or the B1G incorporated as few as 4-5 ACC/AAU teams, the BTN would be in a position to control the subscriber televising rights of nearly 1/3 to 3/5th of the available CFB top-tier inventory (defined as the top 64 programs now in the top five conferences). That’s an argument to the ACC schools that will garner attention.

Add an alliance with the Pac-12 and now BTN/PTN has more inventory than ESPN.

Just some things to think about.

I think it will be interesting to see how this plays out during the negotiations for the new B1G tv deal in 2016-17.

duffman, either I’m misreading you are you’re nuts. “Not much population in the rest of the SEC besides Missouri and A&M”? Population of Texas: 26M Population of Florida: 19.3M, Population of Georgia: 10M, Population of Tennessee: 6.5M, Population fo Missouri: 6M, Population of Alabama: 4.8M, Population of South Carolina: 4.7M, Polulation of Louisiana: 4.6M, Population of Kentucky: 4.4M, Population of Mississippi: 3M. Total 89.3M. That’s a lot of people.

And as for it taking a decade or more, tha’ts the biggest pile of wishful thinking I’ve ever heard. I’d bet my life savings that it doesn’t take a decade or more to get the SEC network going. It’ll either work iwthin the next few years or the whole makret for conference networks will collapse in a way that also takes out the BTN.

I am not saying it will take the SEC Network a decade to penetrate the conference I am saying it will take a decade or more for the SEC Network to penetrate MO and TX. Both schools will have to win and build a strong following of casual fans because neither is known for being elite and they have to compete with other entertainment experiences. My guess is even if Missouri wins they will never have the media demand of the Cardinals have in the east and the Jayhawks have in the western part of MO.

duffman: ” If TAMU and Missouri deliver market share that could be huge as there is not much population in the rest of the SEC …”

Uhhmmm … Florida? To me, Florida counts as “much population”. Far more than Missouri, obviously. If A&M captures East Texas for the SEC and 10% of the rest of the state, more than either the SEC or Big12 parts of Texas.

Uhhmmm … Florida? To me, Florida counts as “much population”. Far more than Missouri, obviously. If A&M captures East Texas for the SEC and 10% of the rest of the state, more than either the SEC or Big12 parts of Texas.

Not saying Florida (the state) does not have a large population but like TX it is a fractured state. If the Gators had 100% of FL the same way Alabama + Auburn have 100% of AL it would be different but they do not. The Gators must share their state with FSU to the west and Miami to the south. In addition they must share the state with pro teams and and other D I FBS schools like UCF and USF. While I agree TX and FL are one of the Big 4 (with NY and CA) they will never own the states. CA is a huge state but it also has 4 PAC schools in it and no schools in the ACC / B1G / B12 / SEC to share with.

Look at it another way in how long the programs have been in the spotlight. Schools like Alabama, Ohio State, Oklahoma, Southern Cal, and Notre Dame have been in MNC games going back to World War II. The Florida schools (Florida, Florida State, and Miami) have only been in the limelight in the last 20 or so years so they are all younger in terms of long term fan support. It is not accidental that Alabama and Tennessee have stadiums over 100,000. Georgia and LSU have stadiums over 90,000. Florida’s stadium is about the size of Auburn and Auburn is #2 in the much smaller population state of Alabama.

But “its a fractured state” does not mean its split EVENLY three or five ways … Florida is the leading school IN Florida. Even if you just count northern Florida through to the I-4 corridor, its still a “populous state” … and still a rapidly growing populous state.

Andy says:
April 23, 2013 at 12:47 am
Cookie Monster, yes, you have “corrected me” multiple times, never with a smidgen of evidence.

Fact: basketball has not been a driver in conference realignment thus far.

Wanted to point out the incorrect nature of your post

#1 If the bigger conferences break away from the NCAA then all that money [fast approaching 1 Billion per year] will flow to the top conferences instead of the NCAA HQ

#2 If you were correct the new Big East and their new media deal would like to say hello

#3 If you were correct then why did the ACC add Louisville and Syracuse – schools with valuable basketball programs – in this last round of realignment?

#4 Texas A&M to the SEC was football based but Mizzou to the SEC looks more basketball based

#5 Utah football had a single major bowl game in their entire history but they have been to to the Final Four in 1944, 1961, 1968, and 1988. Of those 4 trips 1 resulted in a National Championship and 1 resulted in the Championship game. In addition they have been to 15 or 16 Sweet Sixteen games which makes them more of a basketball school than a football one.

#6 Maryland went to the B1G based more on basketball success than football success.

#7 Creighton, Butler, and Xavier are not football schools. My gut tells me Dayton and SLU are also basketball schools that will be upgrading their value in the near future.

#8 ESPN carved out a niche early on broadcasting Big East and ACC basketball. ESPN is now a major sports player and well aware of their roots.

#9 While overall the SEC had the best football conference this past season the B1G had the best basketball conference

I find almost all fo these points to be less than compelling. And anyway I will be shocked if the Big Ten takes Kansas even if Kansas is good at basketball. Wouldn’t you be? Wouldn’t everyone be shocked? I would think even Kansas fans would be shocked.

No, he is right on the preferences. If UT hadn’t been smitten with the idea of LHN do you doubt the PAC 16 wouldn’t exist today? If Kansas wouldn’t/couldn’t leave KSU then Utah or someone else (not Baylor) would have been the 16th.

If we’re talking preferences then the PAC almost certainly wanted Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri plus one more. But they never went for Kansas or Missouri because it wasn’t politically feasible.

I don’t know what silly little rumor you’re talking about. I do know that I’ve read more than I’d ever care to admit about this topic and have never seen a shred of evidence anywhere that the Pac 12 was going to take Kansas. I have seen a hell of a lot of actual information suggesting that the B1G was fairly close to adding Missouri. But nothing about Kansas to the Pac 12. Ever.

It was flight plan filed when aTm said no, Baylor was floated by Texans and sunk by the PAC. Flight never occurred because aTm informed Scott that UT planed to still do their own channel for themselves. I have no idea what Kansas would have said, but I do know flight aware had that flight plan up.

Because Kansas stayed in the Big 12. Had the Pac 16 happened, Missouri would have been up a creek. Probably would still get #14 in SEC, but they would have been sweating bullets, just like KSU, ISU and Baylor.

bullet, Missouri wouldn’t have been up a creek at all. That’s one of the most ridiculous things you’ve ever said, and that’s saying something. The Missouri to B1G move fell apart mostly because the Pac 16 didn’t happen. If it did happen, then the B1G would have expanded past 12 right away and Missouri was to be one of the schools added. Failing that, the SEC had been after Missouri for awhile at that point and would have happily taken them.

ccrider, if Texas had initially joined the Pac 16 then Missouri would be in the B1G, WVU would be in the SEC, and ku might very well have been in the Pac 12. But Utah has that spot now and KU isn’t getting it.

I side a bit with bullet. Had the P16 happened Missouri would have been at sea. They did have a sturdy boat and good oars so they would have found a good port. But I don’t know it would have been the B1G. I doubt the addressing of demographics and moving on the mid Atlantic/east coast is a two year old plan. It’s been coming for a decade (outside ND joining) or more and I’m not sure saving Missouri from a conference implosion served that plan.

Amazing how you ignore history. Missouri was offering Texas, OU and A&M their share of the NU and CU exit fees to stay. That doesn’t happen if they have alternatives at the time. Missouri was talking to the Big East. Nebraska was #12 in the B1G. And the B1G was not going to add two schools in slow growth states in the Midwest. That wasn’t in the plan. Once Nebraska was in, further Midwest expansion was not on the agenda. 6 Big 12 schools would have gone to the Pac, 1 to the B1G, 1 to the SEC and the other 4 would be furiously working the phones. Most likely Baylor, KSU and ISU join the Big East and Missouri ends up in the same place. B1G still looks east for #13 and #14.

If you are Larry Scott and TAMU was not a possibility then you have to think Kansas would be ahead of Missouri and Kansas would be the “pair” that prevails in the PAC 16

Honestly, this claim is so non-controversial I’m surprised that it even spawned this thread.

In the context of your scenario (PAC16 with Kansas), IMHO, Missouri would have had the option to join the SEC with A&M. They probably would have to sweat it out a few days, but I don’t think the SEC would have found a better option to pair with the Aggies. I don’t know if a Big Ten invite would have come, but there was a chance that the Tigers could have had the option to join either conference.

Mike is right. Missouri to the SEC with A&M was always there if Mizzou wanted it. The Big Ten may or may not have chosen to take Missouri if the Pac 12 expanded to 16. From what I’ve heard it was a very strong possibility. But worst case was always the SEC.

If I remember correctly the original buzz was to add TAMU in the west and VPI in the east which may explain how Mizzou wound up in the east. I also remember the OU president saying the invite was there for the Sooners. Either of those would have been bigger additions than Mizzou.

The SEC would have been happy to have the 2 big CoC schools as they could be natural rivals in cross divisions. Since many of the SEC schools have strong military history having the 2 CoC schools was a greatly desired option by older alumni and political folks alike in both schools. While AAU was good, having CoC was an excellent replacement. Some folks at VPI and TAMU had cold feet but TAMU started a grass roots campaign that pushed them to the SEC. VPI was slower and their grass roots campaign did not gain as much traction so the SEC turned to Oklahoma first and then Mizzou later.

VPI already had a history with most of the SEC teams and Jerry Claiborne had coached at both VPI and UK so it was not like VPI would play teams they had no exposure to.

Ask the TAMU folks on here who they wanted as their 14th team back in 2010 at it was almost all VPI. This is not my opinion and was discussed widely on the TAMU and VPI blog sites so it is fact and not my lone oddball opinion as you imply. Yet agin it is you who is wrong and blinded by your Mizzou colored glasses. If the VPI folks had the same grass roots groundswell that TAMU did Mizzou would not be #14. VPI and OU were at least ahead of your Tigers wether you like it or not.

@BuckeyeBeau – The one that jumps out at me is Las Vegas at number 9. Even taking into account gamblers, that’s still very high considering that it’s the one market on that list that doesn’t have a direct connection to any power conference teams. If UNLV could ever become halfway decent at football and their new stadium actually gets built, they might be one of the few schools that could draw the Pac-12 or Big 12 out of their expansion slumbers. UNLV’s academics aren’t quite in line with what the Pac-12 is looking for, but Las Vegas might be a case where the market ends up being too important to just leave on the table.

Interesting. As stated in other posts, I think we might be in for a 10 year pause in realignment, but I don’t think we’re done by any stretch.

Give UNLV another decade and see where they are. As you say, if they build that stadium and continue to have success and continue to grow their academics, they might be a viable candidate for the P-14.

@Frank – The PAC12 held their basketball tournament in Vegas this year. It may help get the PAC presidents used to the idea of Vegas. It was a great weekend for basketball fans with the MW, WCC, PAC12 all having their tournaments there over St. Patrick’s day weekend.

@Frank: I wonder if UNLV would have a Nevada-Reno handcuff problem, like Oklahoma and Ok State. Nevada-Reno adds little but a geographic match. I also agree with you that New Mexico is a plausible long term PAC12 target, but I wonder if they have a similar issue with New Mexico State.

I would be very surprised if they took Boise State or any of the CSU schools (like San Diego State)–the UC system looks down on the CSU schools.

OTOH, it’s a market well within the footprint that, if it’s already #9, is probably already getting a lot of PAC exposure, given that Nevada is nearly surrounded by Pac-12 states To the extent that the market is at all valuable, the league is probably already getting major exposure there in terms of viewer ratings. And in terms of population (i.e. carriage), Nevada is tiny.

Overall, I’d say that the Vegas market is at best “why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free”; hosting some events in Vegas helps tap the market for ratings ,(though if gambling becomes legal everywhere I bet that goes away before long) and there isn’t anything else there that’s worthwhile from a league membership standpoint.

Concerning UMD’s financial disaster; a mole hill made to look like a mountain for the purposes of realignment.

According the Sports Business Journal, when UMD’s President Loh presented his financial analysis to the BoT, he neglected to inform them that he used B1G’s future revenue and compared it to ACC’s current revenue and completely ignored the increase in the ACC’s media deal due to the inclusion of Syracuse and Pitt, not to mention Notre Dame two months before. Also the money that the new College Football Playoff”s were going to bring to the ACC conference were completely ignored by Loh. Here is a link to the article in question:

“When the athletic department cut those seven sports this year, its projections showed total deficits climbing as high as $17 million in 2017 if the department didn’t act. What was missing from those projections, however, was the new revenue that would come from the ACC’s 15-year, $3.6 billion TV deal with ESPN, which was renegotiated after Syracuse and Pittsburgh were added. Nor did the department have the information on new revenue that would come from the college football playoff.”

Also, how bankrupt can the athletic department be if they can afford to buy all the student athletes brand new iPads?

UMD’s financial issues were a bit overstated to make an easy case for the conference switch – it is true that Maryland won’t have to rely on student subsidies as much once they are in the Big Ten though, which is increasingly becoming a goal for all ADs

The non-athletic benefits of Big Ten/CIC membership to College Park far outweigh the considerable athletic gains. Maryland has rebranded itself with a group of universities more its peer — top-flight comprehensive state flagships. Were it not for geography, one senses Berkeley and UCLA would be in the Big Ten.

The Cuse/Pitt renegotiation increased the payout roughly $1M per school a year. If the deficits were projected to climb as high as $17M, $1M a year isn’t going to make the difference. I think you’re out of line to state they made a mole hill look like a mountain. If anything, the renegotiation made a mountain into a 7% shorter mountain.

Also: ” Nor did the department have the information on new revenue that would come from the college football playoff.”

The ACC is falling further behind in the bowl deals. I wonder if “the information on new revenue that would come from the college football playoff” also failed to include the new bowl deals, which puts ACC squarely in 5th place and way behind the B1G, and would widen the gap.

Also, let us not be confused here, I am in no way stipulating that the ACC revenue would have equalled the B1G revenue projections. I am merely stating that Loh wanted to make the best case possible to the BoT and manipulated numbers accordingly.

Another tidbit, the partial addition of ND added another $1 million per team to the ACC.

“At this point the National Cable Television Association claims that they can reach 127.5 million homes in the Unites States, but are actually providing service to 48.5% of them. The US Census has stated that there are a total of 128.2 million housing units (homes) in the country. That would mean that cable companies are providing service to 61.8 million homes.

The only two remaining full-service satellite companies in the US that I can find are Dish Network and Direct TV. Combined they have 32.3 million subscribers – not all of whom would necessarily be home subscribers from what I can tell. However, if we conservatively accepted that all of them were home subscribers, that would mean that 94.1 million American homes have either satellite or cable (73%). If we then take Verizon FiOS and AT&T’s U-verse into account and count them as something like cable providers, we’d have 98 million homes in the US receiving video content from a subscription service of some kind, or 76.44%.

This would mean that roughly 24% of American homes receive video content off-the-air, via personal satellite, or don’t receive any regular video content at all. Confusing the matter *might* be that 13.6% of American homes are either unoccupied or are vacation/part time properties. I found no data on how many of these part time homes subscribe to cable, satellite or something like FiOS.

If you assume that only the 110.6 million homes that are occupied full-time are counted by Nielsen, then you arrive at 88.6% of American homes have cable, satellite or FioS/U-verse.”

The Gor really isn’t going to keep teams from leaving if they choose.
Kansas has also in the mix in the BIG plans and the B12 has GOR.
I’m sure these teams like NC, Virginia, GT, and FSU which have interest in the BIG
were going forward with the others and not cause a storm.
But, the BIG may have to make moves before July if they want the expansion south
with less hassle.
Also from an article referencing Texas to the BIG from 11 warriorshttp://www.elevenwarriors.com/2012/05/11451/b1gs-master-plan
Should the BIG go to a Comcast or another new network, a team can bolt a conference
without any problem.
Also another recent article which touches on the 4 ACC teams rumored in the last year to come
to the BIG. http://www.sportsmancave.com/why-the-wait/

I doubt Delany would not have seen this coming
Remember, HUGE money awaits the BIG in 2017

I think we can assume that nobody will in the top 5 conferences will swap conferences in the next dozen years. Should any of the top 5 conferences choose to expand in the next dozen years, BYU, MWC and AAC schools are the only targets.

I don’t think any of the Big Five leagues has a plausible target. None of those you suggested look especially compelling. And none of these leagues needs to expand as a defensive measure, because they’re all safe now.

Marc – I don’t think any of those schools are compelling either. I was just listing potential targets, should those three conferences choose to expand.

Pac-12: Nevada (the state) and New Mexico are growing states that are contiguous to the Pac 12. While neither has the competitive record or academic chops of Utah, I think both have potential. New States, new markets for the PTN. I don’t think either, or Hawaii for that matter, are close to being Pac-12 ready. They are all fixer uppers.

ACC : Cincy and UConn are only appealing to to the ACC if ESPN thinks they are appealing for basketball purposes.

Big XII: The Big XII will be the only top 5 conference without a CCG. Maybe their champ gets hosed in the playoff selection a couple of years in a row. The conference rep on the committee says that the selection committee held the lack of a CCG against them. Quick fix is to go get Boise and BYU for football only. Long game is to get USF & UCF to get into two of the three best volume recruiting states.

I’m not saying any of these scenarios is likely. I’m just filling in the lineup cards for the next (though unlikely) round.

I think what you will see is possible adjustments or swaps based on GoR. Suppose the PAC added Texas and Kansas while Oklahoma went to the SEC. SEC sends Mizzou to the B1G and gets Maryland. B1G swaps Notre Dame for Rutgers and team to be named later type of moves.

The big issue is swapping top 64 teams vs adding teams below 64 teams. I said it on here earlier that I think you will see 2 FBS levels.

duff – that’s really interesting, but I don’t see conferences working in concert with each other to pull off multi-school NBA-styled trades.

While we’re at it though, how about the SEC trades Mizzou and cash to the B1G, who trades Maryland back to the ACC, who trades Florida State to the SEC? Then everything is perfect and fixes past mistakes over the last 20+ years.

That would have been a nice, clean way to do it. Now there is some messiness. Th ewhole Big 12 is really a mess right now. Missouri in the SEC is a decent fit but not perfect. UConn and Cinci are in a league that’s beneath them. But it could have been a lot wose. Thank God there’s no Big 20.

I think they would need more than cash. Probably at least Georgia would be necessary for a straight swap (though Tennessee, Kentucky, Nick Saban and the Sugar Bowl might cut it) FSU is the ACC’s premier football program and most valuable TV asset. Without them they are a glorified mid-major.

I don’t think that conference reallignment is over until the Big XII is at 12 teams, and possibly 14 or 16. The truth is that long term, the Big XII is in an extraordinarily weak position. Not only is that conference going to be the ONLY FBS conference without a CCG once the Sunbelt finishes expanding, but it will also have by far the smallest markets of any FBS conference. Even the MAC and MWC have much larger population bases. The markets of the AAC blow those of the BIG XII out of the water. More worrisome is the fact that if the ACC does get its own network, the Big XII will be the only member of the “Big 5″ without a conference network. I understand that the Big XII wants to stay at 10 teams because of their higher individual payouts, but if they want to make the league last longer than the GOR, they really need to expand to grow their brand. I think that the Big XII will expand as soon as Dodds is out as President at UT, which will be in a few years.

In reality, the Big XII has two options, either go east or west.

I think the most likely Big XII expansion scenario is to the East, for demographic, scheduling, and West Virginia reasons.

In my opinion, the best options to the east are UCF, USF, Cincinati, and Memphis. I suspect that all four will eventually find their way into the Big XII to get the conference up to the 14 members which is the new standard for major conferences. The Big XII would get major markets, rich recruiting grounds, schools with large student and alumni bases, and decent academic reputations. I also would not be surprised to see the league be the first to 16 with Temple and UConn, but that is a real long shot. I also think that Tulane would be a surprisingly viable candidate for the league based on location, proximity, and academic reputation.

Although I think a western expansion is less likely, the league would have a number of options. Some combination of New Mexico, UNLV, Boise State, Colorado State, San Diego State, Fresno State, or all six could potentially be very attractive to the Big XII. New markets, some of which are huge, especially if you could claim two schools in California and therefore the entire state, and a good mix of quality basketball and football. I actually believe that this expansion makes more sense geographically for the conference, as Colorado and New Mexico are both contiguous states to current members. I also think that the Big XII would have an easier time competing for attention in the west where it’s only competition would be the PAC, than it would competing against the B1G, SEC, and ACC in the East. Notice how I did not include BYU, because I believe that the school is too committed to independence to join a conference in the near future, and I think their refusal to play on Sundays may make them a non-starter anyway.

Jeff – good catch. I could see San Diego State, Fresno State, Colorado State, and Memphis as B12 possibilities as well. I’d still keep them below the schools I previously mentioned. New Mexico and UNLV could work for the B12 too.

I think the most likely scenario is Boise and BYU for football only. If any conference can work around existing contracts and tolerate special deals for some of its members, its the B12.

They liked playing Duke and UNC in hoops. They have some hatred for UVa. Beyond that, I think most Maryland fans were apathetic about the rest of the ACC and felt it was an increasingly poor cultural fit as Maryland isn’t southern at all at this point (though that would have improved with Pitt/Syracuse coming in). In terms of football, Maryland fans don’t see to care much about the ACC, even teams like FSU, Miami (FL) or Clemson.

I think that now that they have have gotten over the initial shock of the conference move, that most Maryland fans are looking forward to playing in a better football league. And the Big Ten’s great performance in basketball this past season probably made the future hoops games seem more intriguing (especially with the ACC being relatively down).

You are looking at the freebie board, BuckeyeBeau. The real heavy hitters who give the money and keep the entire program afloat are on the Rivals Board (much as Texas fans are on Orange Blood). None of those use 247. The move to the B1G is largely very positive, although there were many who hoped that UNC, GaTech, UVA or FSU (pick ANY two) would decide to join in an Eastern division of the B1G. We have a long history with UNC and Duke in hoops and that is going away, but we’ve had no real rivals in football (except Clemson in the 70s and 80s). I remember our most detested rivals as PSU even though the record doesn’t show it. It won’t take long to reestablish that. It is the old Mason-Dixon series we always loved.

I’ve got several close friends who are in Columbus (both MD’s) and while both are UCLA undergrads, both have embraced B1G football. Definitely going to make a trip out to see OSU. If you read the Maryland board at this moment about how the ACC “jobbed us” with next year’s basketball schedule, and if you read that outrage that that has produced, you’d have no fear of just how much we want out of the ACC even though we were a Founding/Charter Member. And, the CIC arrangement is something no other Conference can hope to match, and as a researcher, I can tell you that is the part of the B1G the normal sports fans don’t even appreciate.

Maryland felt like an outlier in the ACC with them no longer have any real rivals in the ACC. After Virginia Tech joined, the rivalry with Virginia became a relative significant one to just another game, in both revenue sports. Maryland wanted WV in the ACC when the NC schools preferred Pitt & Syracuse…

For Maryland fans, the ACC is starting to appear in the rear-view mirror. It’d be fun to keep the rivalry with UVa (especially since I live in Charlottesville) and to visit the Research Triangle, but that’s clearly not happening anytime soon. College Park has crossed the Rubicon.

no, if only because that would imply some sort of joint decision to hold off on realignment while Emmert The Clown King is deposed and other NCAA problems are addressed.

in this case, the ACC acted unilaterally and in its own interests. This solitary action, done without any sort of joint-among-the-conferences contribution, puts an end ~~~ at least in theory ~~~ to this phase of realignment (at the top).

moreover, i don’t think realignment has been a bar to the conferences acting jointly and I the conferences have been able to focus on other matters while realignment has been taking place. The end of the BCS and the new playoff structure is a prime example.

I would go a step further and give the B12 the 0.0 GPA for the last semester

#1 Had 7 AAU schools now they have 3
#2 Lost NE, CO, MO, and a chunk of TX for a smaller part of TX and WV
#3 Lost 4 of their 6 all time football schools
#4 Lost the revenue and exposure of a CCG
#5 Created an outlier in WVU and no close travel partner
#6 Let the ACC get stronger when they could have killed them
#7 Went individual with the LHN in an age of shared networks like the BTN and PTN
#9 Failed to expand the footprint with rising schools in BYU and Louisville
#10 Lost congressmen in NE, CO, and MO to the B1G, PAC, and SEC

PAC 12 gets a D+? They should have added Utah State and Colorado State? What a moron. PAC had the biggest money upgrade of any conference, added schools that actually fit their existing culture and launched the 2nd TV network. Putting them behind the Big 12 and ACC especially shows what an idiot that guy is.

Hockey is really growing in this Country. You have the 18,000 people that came to Philadelphia to see Penn State/Ohio State in hockey, Penn State Pegula Ice Arena coming in October (Nittany Lion Hockey became a game changer (The Big 10 Hockey Conference and lots of Conference switching)), a new arena in Allentown, Pa, and assuming it gets finished, the agreement that will bring the largest Ice Skating facility in the Country is coming to The Bronx, New York in 2018 (9 regulation NHL rinks and 5,000 seats), are examples of this.http://www.nypost.com/p/…/bx_ice_palace_ue8jYHZDXAQAgzOSVu71EM
I know there are issues such as Title IX, but with the current low interest rate environment (Lowering construction costs), and the Big 10 Network and their dollars, it makes sense for schools like Nebraska and Illinois to jump on board. To be honest, with the success of the Black Hawks, I am shocked there is has not happened already. Since Frank is an Illini Guy, I wonder if he has the answer to that question, and does he think that the Illini will start up a Division 1 Program.

@David Brown – If I had the means to write a $100 million check, I’d fund an Illinois hockey program itself. Unfortunately, that seems to be about the amount that it would take to get it going based on Penn State’s experience. Illinois is pretty much in the exact same position that Penn State was: very strong club hockey team with a good fan base (the Illini club team already sells tickets on par with a lot of lower level Division I programs) with a student population predisposed to supporting the sport (most students are from either the Chicago or St. Louis metro areas). Virtually everyone in the know believes that an Illini Division I program would do gangbusters. The problem is that this has been said ever since I was in college there (and I graduated in 2000) and nothing has changed. It just seems like a benefactor has to step in to front the capital costs in the same manner as Penn State. There were some rumors that the founder of Jimmy John’s (the company has its headquarters in Champaign) was considering to give a donation for a new ice arena, but that hasn’t come to fruition yet. Believe me – hockey would work as a startup sport at Illinois probably better than anywhere else in the country at this point. The upfront costs are simply massive, though, which is why it hasn’t happened yet. I really hope it does since it would be pretty awesome from my perspective.

Frank thank you for answering my question: When it comes to Penn State, they have wanted to upgrade to Division 1 for decades until Pegula decided to pony up for it. (So as a Penn State (And hockey) fan, I understand what Illinois hockey fans are going through) I guess it is fair to say that the next Big 10 team to add hockey (Assuming it happens) will be Nebraska (Since they are adding ice to their new facility). If the Huskers do add hockey, it will be interesting to see what happens next to keep it even? Will it be another Big 10 School, or perhaps a Boston University (Just for Hockey & of course, academics, sort of like Hopkins for Lacrosse and academics))

The Big Ten apparently had exploratory talks a few years ago with the MAC hockey teams – Bowling Green, Western Michigan, and Miami – about being associate members in a Big Ten Hockey Conference. I don’t think they went very far, and I don’t know specifically why they decided to stop pursuing the idea. But it has been considered.

In Lacrosse, there’s a perfect storm of reasons to add Johns Hopkins. The Big Ten needs one more team to officially form a conference, and it’s been suggested for TV inventory, too. The suggested CIC membership offer to the #1 Research University in the country (world?) is certainly logical. Hopkins location in Baltimore is right in the middle of our new footprint. They have an existing rivalry with Maryland, and a Big Ten Lacrosse league could use a power to help prop up Michigan (as well as Rutgers and OSU to a lesser degree). It appears that no existing Big Ten school is ready to promote Lacrosse to Varsity – although I wouldn’t be surprised to see it happen after 2016 when the new Tier 1 TV contract money kicks in.

It’s just the opposite in hockey. I just don’t see a school out there that makes sense for The Big Ten Hockey Conference. Unlike Lacrosse, the numbers work great already. Six teams gets you an autobid, and allows for four games against every conference opponent, and allows for 14 non-conference games, which is plenty to allow for playing some other top teams and maintain games against former conference rivals. They have plenty of TV inventory for the BTN; so this isn’t TV driven either. Furthermore, the Big Ten Hockey Conference will be a national power from day one, so we don’t need a Hopkins Lacrosse to help prop us up. And with Hockey East being a powerhouse conference, I don’t see why BC, BU, or anyone else would want to mess up their rivalries and travel to join the Big Ten. It just doesn’t make sense.

Until the next football realignment shakes up the world, I would put the odds of an associate membership offer in hockey at below 1%.

Just spitballing here, but if there were an offer, I’d look west, not east. Minnesota gained the least (or lost the most) by the formation of the BTHC. If the next team was Nebraska, Iowa, or Illinois, and an eighth team was needed, then adding a fourth Central Time Zone team isn’t the worst idea in the world. North Dakota offers a national, traditional power, and they are the biggest rival of Minnesota Hockey.

@Mike – Yeah, the entire reason why the Big Ten even explored associate hockey members previously was simply that they didn’t have enough full members to form its own hockey league. Now that Penn State has added hockey, it’s a moot point. If the Big Ten wasn’t going to let Notre Dame in for hockey, it’s not going to entertain MAC schools or North Dakota. Any growth for Big Ten hockey will likely need to come from within (e.g. Illinois or Nebraska upgrading).

Lacrosse is in a bit different situation with a very unique potential addition in Johns Hopkins with respect to academics and how that school’s athletic department is set up. Plus, there isn’t a new potential Big Ten men’s lacrosse startup on the horizon (beyond the new Michigan program), so JHU fills an immediate need. I’ve always seen this as very distinguishable compared to adding, say, Boston University for hockey.

Agree with the above that no school other than Hopkins would likely be considered for non-football membership.

For one thing, I highly doubt the B1G wants to allow a situation where a school could compete in the conference for some sports and against it in others. That would not be a problem with Hopkins, because, like every current member, they would be keeping all of their scholarship sports in the conference. D1 schools like Boston University could not do that.

Plus, Hopkins is without a doubt a major power in the two areas the B1G/CIC would be getting—research and lacrosse. It has the highest research expenditures of any school in the country, and it’s so successful in lacrosse as to have its own deal with ESPN.

If the B1G were to consider another similar situation, it presumably would want an AAU school. Of the AAU schools that are primarily in D3 (NYU, Case Western, Rochester, Carnegie Mellon, Emory, Brandeis), it appears that only Rochester’s squash team is D1. And no B1G schools have scholarship squash teams.

We’re all in agreement here; the growth of Big Ten hockey will come from within, but it will take a Pegula-like Godfathering of a program to get it to start. I think it’s a long shot for anyone else to start up any time soon, as the cost is prohibitive.

It is interesting that they looked at the MAC schools as associate members; they may have learned some lessons that helped the conference consider Johns Hopkins.

I will predict that Lacrosse will see some quick growth internally. I believe that when the 2016 Tier 1 contracts hit (if not sooner), and there’s extra revenue, both Northwestern and Michigan State will add lacrosse. Northwestern already has the best women’s program in the nation, so they’ve got a facility and perhaps a level of comfort with the sport. MSU once had men’s lacrosse, so it won’t be new to them, either. Lacrosse is quickly growing in the midwest, but especially in Michigan and Chicago. Finally, MSU and Indiana are the only two schools in the East in football that do not have lacrosse. It makes sense for MSU to add lacrosse to add another link to the East Coast.

For NW there’s the TitleIX implications … they may have the facilities and the set-up largely in place to launch a Men’s LAX team, but then they need to add a women’s sport or two for TitleIX balance ~ I don’t know which sport that would be. Rowing, perhaps, as they are on a river not far from the lake?

For MSU, the Women’s LAX would be the TitleIX offset for the Men’s LAX.

Bruce – you’re right about Northwestern needing to add a women’s sport. That was a point I overlooked. Women’s crew makes sense, water polo might as well.

But still, with Big Ten revenues supposedly doubling from $22 to $44M over the next few years, the point remains that funds should be available to add a few teams, and Lacrosse makes a lot of sense for a few schools, as it is consistent with the high school growth of the sport in the region, it offers a link to the East and adds TV inventory in the spring.

They’re ever so slight winners. They are no longer with UTEP, Rice (sorry, Loki), Southern Miss, UAB, or Marshall. They’re reunited with Cincinnati, USF, and, temporarily, Louisville. They’re with Rutgers, short-term, with Temple and UConn, and will soon be with Navy.

It’s an upgrade. It’s not Utah-to-the-Pac-12 or TCU-to-the-Big 12. But it’s their best setup since the SWC days.

Tulane is also a winner here. Pre-Katrina, there was a university committee that studied dropping football to D-3, or dropping it altogether. Post-Katrina, they started off by playing all away games and having the campus shut down. Now, with a new conference, the AAC, along with a new on-campus stadium in 2014, and a coach that is recruiting New Orleans and the local area very hard, Tulane should be in the best shape they’ve been in since before WWII.

Additionally, it’s worth noting that this conference will get far more exposure than C-USA ever did/will. The paychecks are a boost from what they’ve been getting, albeit not the major spike they’d anticipated. But these schools will at least be on ABC/ESPN/ESPN2/ESPNU/ESPN8THEOCHO far more often than the MAC, Sun Belt, or other Group of Five leagues. It’s a mid-major, but it’ll prove to be a very glorified mid-major.

But the qualifier is “the last few years”. Over the longer term, leaving CUSA 1.0 for The American is treading water. Over the last few years, leaving CUSA 2.0 and avoid CUSA 3.0 fr the American is a win.

While not the the level of conference they were hoping to join, its still a net win compared to where they were a few years ago.

I think the BIG should make a play for Kentucky. I think the BIG has a compelling case to get them to leave the SEC.

Kentucky doesn’t have any real rivals in the SEC. Maybe Tennessee. In basketball, there is no traditional rivals. The University is about 3 hours away from the two nearest schools in Tennessee which would be about the same distance it is from the two nearest BIG schools, Indiana and OSU. The school does sit only 1 1/2 from the Ohio border. OSU could become a big rival and the Buckeye fans would sell out Kentucky’s football Stadium, which the team struggles to do, every other year if they were paired together. Also playing OSU and Indiana every year in basketball would far outweigh anybody they would face in the SEC. Lastly, the school has since 1997 instituted the Top 20 Compact with the state with the desire goal of making UK a top 20 public research institution. They are currently in the Top 50 overall. Not only the school but state officials would salivate at the prospect of increasing research to the state as that would mean more jobs. Kentucky could increase its prestige and likelyhood of getting into the AAU in the future by joining the BIG and the BIG would up the profile of its winter sports programming on the BTN while essentially killing the SEC’s before their network gets off the ground.

IU + UK = great rivalry in football (made a competitive game) which sells BTN
IU + UK = great rivalry in basketball (made a competitive game) which sells CBS
CJ in Louisville already covers both teams as the buffer media

Uk’s endowment is fast approaching the billion dollar level and their last president was an MIT grad that focused the university on education and research. The upside is it would kill off Louisville and Cincinnati as buffers and make the entire territory fly under 1 flag. Not sure if I agree about the Ohio State vs Kentucky in basketball as much as you can sell Michigan State vs Kentucky based on past history. The issue is where they will be 20 years from now based on the jump the past 20 years.

Kentucky was historically at the bottom along with Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, and West Virginia. However, they have climbed greatly in the past generation and continue to rise. Instead of always being in the bottom 5 they have moved into the 30’s which is a pretty rapid rise. While not at the top they have at least made major financial investments to head up instead of down. The issue is seeing the Golden Triangle – where most of the population lives bounded by Louisville, Cincinnati, and Lexington – is the true majority and not the minority of folks that live in Eastern Kentucky but give the state its stereotype perception to the national audience and media.

The University of Kentucky and its Medical Center are definitely trying to up its profile. I said it was improbable but far from ridiculous. Universities are more than just sports. In some cases they are the biggest employers in an area and the driver of the economy. In Lexington that is the case. If Delaney went to the heads of the University and state politicians and said we can offer the same, if not more, money athletically but a chance for $100 millions more in research grants by partnering with some of the most prestigious public universities in the country, do you think they wouldn’t listen. Especially in a state with a natioal image of being backwards and slack-jawed? I think the BIG could definitely get their attention.

Why would they want Kentucky when they didn’t want Misssouri? Kentucky has 30% fewer people, is way worse at football, isn’t AAU, I’m sorry but this entire concept makes no sense. But I guess you have to talk about something on here and it’s actually quite a bit less stupid than the Big 20 crap that was thrown around on here for the past few months.

Kentucky has a top 3 basketball program with rabid local support and a national following. Missouri has more people than the state of Kentucky. But just like it had more people than Nebraska, it is completely irrelevant with respect to national brands.

I don’t think the BIG would pursue Kentucky but that is a mistake. I don’t believe the BIG realizes that it is in direct competition now with the SEC for dollars thru their respective networks. Effectively killing, or seriously wounding if you prefer, the SEC’s winter sports programming by taking their only national basketball brand is just as important as improving the BTN’s own basketball content. There are only so many advertising dollars to go around.

I don’t think the BIG would pursue Kentucky but that is a mistake. I don’t believe the BIG realizes that it is in direct competition now with the SEC for dollars thru their respective networks. Effectively killing, or seriously wounding if you prefer, the SEC’s winter sports programming by taking their only national basketball brand is just as important as improving the BTN’s own basketball content. There are only so many advertising dollars to go around.

Keep in mind UK also has one of the top drawing women’s basketball teams and would probably be a top baseball and softball team in the B1G so you have not only winter but spring programming for the BTN. They also have a good hockey club that could easily become NCAA sanctioned in a conference of hockey teams. While UK may be a small state they have a rabid national fan base and their basketball team on the road fills opponents venues. When they played at TAMU this season Reed was full of blue and they have a history of selling out opponents venues with their fans. I am guessing you have never been to Lexington or experienced BBN or the “blue mist”.

okay, so the same delusional nut jobs who swore that the Big Ten would expand to 20 are now saying that the Big Ten would love to have Kentucky. Do you guys hear little voices in your heads? Is this where you’re getting this? Because I guarantee you that no serious person thinks this is credible.

a) I have never been a proponent of 20 and have always felt 16 was the stopping point

b) If you were on FtT in the beginning you would have remembered the Kentucky and Tennessee posts that came from somebody who was not me about the big Vol booster who had already gotten the back channel talks going.

While I have always felt UK to the B1G was improbable I have never said it was impossible. Nebraska and Kentucky are similar in many ways if you swap football for basketball in terms of demographics and demand. If UNL had not gotten AAU status in the beginning I think they would be very close in even more ways.

Yeah, I remember that talk. Didn’t find it credible then. Don’t find it credible now. And if anything has been proven over the last 2-3 years, it’s that rumors are usually false. As for the rumors I’ve heard about Missouri having an offer from the B1G that was somehow broken/botched, even though I heard it from multiple seemingly credible sources, I have my doubts about that one too. I don’t doubt that Missouri was a candidate and could have been taken instead of Rutgers if not Nebraska, I don’t think very people know what really happened. And I suspect anyone talking about Kentucky back then was blowing smoke, especially since it hasn’t been spoken of since.

If you talking about research dollars, UK is in the top 50. They are not so great in the US News rankings but funding is over 300 million. Never said the BIG would go after Kentucky, or that Kentucky would join, only that the BIG should go after UK and that they have a compelling case to offer. Whether the BIG knows it or not, but they are now in direct competition with the SEC thru their networks just like Fox versus Espn or ABC versus CBS, but to a much smaller extent. There are only so many eyeballs and so much advertising dollars to go around. UK basketball is primetime gold.

The BIG should have two overriding goals for the future of the conference: one is how to monopolize a greater share of the shrinking research dollars available to universities and two is how to maximize revenue thru television properties for the athletics departments. The BTN is a huge part of two and upgrading its content, especially at the expense of its competitors, is just good business. Delaney should start thinking like a network CEO as well as a college administrator.

Indiana is ranked #17 or #18 in three of the four polls. The Hoosiers are unranked in Collegiate Baseball. Pitt is #23 in Collegiate Baseball and Notre Dame is #28 in NCBWA. That’s it for the northern contingent.

North Carolina remains #1 in all polls, while LSU is #2 in all polls. Fullerton, Vandy, and Virginia round out the top 5.

Nebraska and Indiana continue to move up the average attendance rankings. Nebraska is #22 and averaging 2,528 fans per game. Indiana is now #43 and averaging 1,506 fans per game. Wichitia State and Creighton are both in the top 30. The SEC continues to hold all five of the top attendance slots, and 13 SEC schools are in the top 34. Andy – your Tiger fans need to step it up.

Bamatab – your elephants fought valiantly this past weekend in losing two of three to my Tigers. Friday night was no contest with a complete game shutout pitching gem by Aaron Nola. LSU took the Saturday night game in 16 innings, and the Tide avoided the sweep and benefited from two uncharacteristic Tiger errors to take the Sunday game in 10 innings. Dog piling on the field after the 4-3 victory was a little much, though.

Yeah, the dog piling was definitely a little much. I just wish Bama would get serious with their baseball program. We need to a new baseball facility/park bad IMO. We have the land and money to build one. I wish they would just do it. We’ve got good football, gymnastics, men’s & women’s golf, and softball programs. There is no reason why we can’t invest in our baseball program. Our lack of baseball success irrates me more than our lack of basketball success.

#1 North Carolina lost 9-8 to a mostly ranked UNC-Wilmington team last night. Its hard to read too much into a mid-week loss and the Seahawks appear to be a pretty good team, but anytime a #1 loses its newsworthy.

Never really thought about Kentucky & Missouri combo, its actually kind of interesting……. probably about a .5% chance, but Delaney has gotten aggressive after other conferences/schools have made moves.

They would drop perfectly into the football divisions and the basketball would jump up to the top conference ahead of the ACC. An incredible BiG tournament….. maybe in some years rivaling the NCAA tournament.

Kentucky is a 0% chance, so “X and Kentucky” is automatically a 0% chance.

Kentucky plus Missouri don’t move the needle enough on any front to justify the downside of going up to 16, plus Kentucky doesn’t move the needle enough in sports to justify getting into a fight over a non-AAU school.

Why would the Buckeyes or that school up north or Penn State want the East to trade off a game against the likes of Wisconsin, Nebraska or Iowa in a given year to add a game against fracking Kentucky?

@Frankthetank: Do you have any details as to what rights are covered in the ACC’s GoR? Is it just TV revenue from home games? This could be a situation where the devils does indeed reside deep within the details.

@Frankthetank: Do you have any details as to what rights are covered in the ACC’s GoR? Is it just TV revenue from home games? This could be a situation where the devils does indeed reside deep within the details.

you guys are such tools. my god. Missouri was never, ever going to the Mountain West. That is a ridiculous statement. Missouri had three options: B1G, SEC, or Big 12. If the Big 12 fell apart, they were going to either the B1G or SEC. This should even be remotely debatable considering how things turned out.

Because all the arrangments weren’t made yet so Missouri couldn’t break from the group until they were. That’s what the gorup decided to do so that’s what Missouri had to do. Missouri kept going along with whatever the group was doing up until the final weeks. But Missouri to the SEC was in the works for quite a while. Missouri to the B1G was also something that was worked on but obviously never happened. If the Pac 12 expanded to 16 and the B1G expanded to 16 then Missouri no doubt would have gotten a serious look. Only the most stubborn of Anti-Andy-ites would disagree.

What I’ve heard from very reliable sources is that if Missouri needed to wait on the SEC or B1G for a year or two the waiting spot was going to be in the Big East. Kansas, Kansas State, Iowa State, and Missouri were all ready to park there, with Missouri and maybe Kansas able to move out within a year or two at most.

Ah, left out Rutgers and maybe Baylor. Anyway, who knows what that Big East would have looked like, but Missouri wouldn’t have been there for long. As we saw in real life rather than imagionationlad, the SEC wanted Missouri

OSU has been playing them since they joined. OSU was going to continue playing them if RU and UMD weren’t added. Now OSU also gets MSU, our least common old B10 opponent since they joined (see below) in addition to two newbies with zero appeal, plus IN, the worst team in the B10.

IN was already in a division with them, too. MSU would be stuck playing for the LGT against a team that resented having to play for it. All four schools get 2 horrible games in exchange for 1 good one, which is a bad trade in my book.

@Brian: fwiw, I do not share your distaste for the new B1G East Division. I think Rutgers could be interesting. Maybe like Purdue. (Wonder if the Scarlet Knights have anything fun like the world’s largest drum?)

I admit that Maryland still seems a strange fixture on the schedule, but hopefully it will be better than the likes of Toledo, Ohio and various other MACrifice teams. They certainly have colorful unis. We now have an “Oregon” in the conference and we will all have a good time making fun of them.

With three cross-division games along with MSU, MI, IN and PSU, that’s seven of the traditional Big Ten teams each year (I count PSU as a traditional Big Ten team).

Add in the likely annual trip to Indy (grin) and that might be 8 of 11 every year.

That will be fine. It’s not like we play all the B1G teams now. Even before Nebraska joined, teams cycled off the schedule.

Besides, there are trade-offs here and I think they are good trade-offs for tOSU. The “east coast media bias” has some validity. tOSU, PSU and TSUN are going to be the biggest CFB brands playing consistently on in the DC and NYC areas. Being written up in the Washington Post on a regular basis is really really good long term for the University, not just for the football program.

“@Brian: fwiw, I do not share your distaste for the new B1G East Division.”

A lot of people don’t. I’ve never claimed to be speaking for the OSU fan base about this.

“I think Rutgers could be interesting. Maybe like Purdue.”

As far as competition, they could be on par. The difference is the 100 years of history together.

“I admit that Maryland still seems a strange fixture on the schedule, but hopefully it will be better than the likes of Toledo, Ohio and various other MACrifice teams.”

I greatly prefer MAC teams. It keeps the money in state and I like easy wins if I’m at the game.

“With three cross-division games along with MSU, MI, IN and PSU, that’s seven of the traditional Big Ten teams each year (I count PSU as a traditional Big Ten team).”

And I don’t, so that’s 5-6 to me (sometimes we’ll play NE and they certainly aren’t one either).

“That will be fine. It’s not like we play all the B1G teams now. Even before Nebraska joined, teams cycled off the schedule.”

Yes, we played 8 of 8 games against old-B10 foes pre-PSU and 7 of 8 pre-NE (out of 9 possible teams). Then we played 6 of 8 post-NE. In 2013 it’ll go back to 7 of 8, then likely drop to 5 of 8 for 2014-5. In 2016 it should rise to 6-7 of 9 (depends on when NE is on the schedule).

Add in the 3-4 OOC games, and we’re talking a significant loss in true B10 games.

“Besides, there are trade-offs here and I think they are good trade-offs for tOSU.”

I don’t think there is a net gain except possibly financially (remains to be seen).

If east coast appearances were so important to OSU and MI, wouldn’t they have played an OOC game there in the past 50 years? OSU hasn’t played UMD or RU in that time period. OSU’s 2014 game in Baltimore against Navy is our first trip to the coast since a Kickoff Classic in the 90s. We also played @BC in 1990. That’s it in 50 years. Meanwhile, OSU has played lots of west coast and southern teams in that same time period. MI is in a similar position.

Brian – I look at Maryland and Rutgers as platforms to showcase Michigan to alums and fans and hopefully help us acquire new students and fans in a massive footprint stretching from Northern Virginia through DC, Baltimore, Philly, Jersey, NYC, and Long Island. I agree that adding these two schools to our football schedule annually is not a “win” for my enjoyment of watching my team play football.

But I do accept that these moves combined are *projected* to be very good for the conference as a whole, and will make the schools stronger nationally. And I have a certain amount of faith that the “investment” in Rutgers and Maryland will pay off. With this exposure, I expect Michigan (and all Big Ten schools, really) to have better access to top basketball players in NYC and Baltimore and DC. I expect Michigan to have better access to top football recruits in Jersey, Maryland, DC, and Northern Virginia. I expect that revenue from not only BTN but the new Tier 1 contract will increase our athletic budgets – and hopefully it is invested wisely to further help our coaching staffs and facilities to recruit players. And the exposure will bring in more students – who will pay out-of-state tuition.

As of now, it appears better than the alternative, which perhaps would have been no expansion to Nebraska, and leaving Penn State isolated and surrounded by Syracuse, Pitt, Maryland, and BC in the ACC in the East.

“I look at Maryland and Rutgers as platforms to showcase Michigan to alums and fans and hopefully help us acquire new students and fans in a massive footprint stretching from Northern Virginia through DC, Baltimore, Philly, Jersey, NYC, and Long Island.”

And that’s fine. I’m not trying to convince people I’m right, I’m just stating my opinion. I just think that aspect is overrated. This is all a projected money grab. B10 schools already recruit that area in football, and hoops players travel all over the country anyway. As for students, that’s been growing without any games there. If these games are so valuable, why haven’t OSU and MI been playing even once a decade out there? For OSU, maybe 5% of our alumni are in that area. It’s higher for MI (10-15% maybe?), but MI still hasn’t played OOC games there. Suddenly annual games there are worthwhile.

“I agree that adding these two schools to our football schedule annually is not a “win” for my enjoyment of watching my team play football.”

Obviously.

“But I do accept that these moves combined are *projected* to be very good for the conference as a whole, and will make the schools stronger nationally.”

I think they’re projected to make money. The link to that being very good for the conference is tenuous. The B10 has been a financial leader for years and IN, IL, PU and MN all still stunk. I don’t see more games against mediocre teams as helping the B10’s reputation any either.

“And I have a certain amount of faith that the “investment” in Rutgers and Maryland will pay off.”

They should be solidly midpack.

“I expect that revenue from not only BTN but the new Tier 1 contract will increase our athletic budgets – and hopefully it is invested wisely to further help our coaching staffs and facilities to recruit players.”

The Tier 1 deal was going to jump no matter what. I’m not sure UMD and RU will help much with that since the experts have said the deals are based largely on the big games. Maybe they add enough viewers to have a significant impact, but B10 games usually already got shown there didn’t they?

“As of now, it appears better than the alternative, which perhaps would have been no expansion to Nebraska, and leaving Penn State isolated and surrounded by Syracuse, Pitt, Maryland, and BC in the ACC in the East.”

NE is a different issue, since they fit and brought the CCG. The B10 could easily have stuck at 12, right? PSU did just fine surrounded by those schools before.

Sure, as a result of realignment they traded Utah for Boise State and a collection of schools to be named later, and got the chance to wave at TCU as it passed through, but on the other hand they are making more money and have a path to the Access Bowls without any rankings test to pass in order to bust the bracket.

Did they really lose BYU to conference realignment? Remind me, again, which conference they lost BYU to?

on the other hand they are making more money and have a path to the Access Bowls without any rankings test to pass in order to bust the bracket.

How exactly are they making more money as a result of realignment? The fact is, they lost their three biggest assets (UU, BYU and TCU) and are weaker competitively. And the end of the BCS wasn’t the result of realignment (and keep in mind, if they had held Utah, BYU and TCU they would have an even better path to the Access Bowls).

And yes they lost BYU to realignment. BYU chose to go to another conference (the WCC) for most of its sports and independent in football.

I’d like to add that another one of the biggest potenial winners from conference reallignment is Jerry Falwell and his family. The total chaos which has ensued may wind up ending up in a Sunbelt invite for Liberty University. Liberty University’s leadership has long seen D1 Athletics as a means to help legitimize their University in the academic community, something which has proven almost impossible given many of their, let’s call it unacademic beliefs, ie. a museum depicting human beings and dinosaurs living together on campus and an attempt to ban the Democratic Party from campus. Now, nobody is ever going to compare Liberty to Duke or Notre Dame or BYU, but Liberty can at least claim to be competing on the same athletic level and therefore legitimize itself by association. Given the regard which most academics regard Liberty, I find it doubtful that such a chance would have come along for many years, if ever,without this set of massive shifts. For similar reasons, I think that all the FCS Schools that got to move up their programs like App State, Georgia State, Old Dominion, Charlotte, and especially Georgia Southern (who I think has the potential to be the next Boise State) will all end up as some of the biggest winners. On a definitional level, at least, Nebraska, Maryland, and Rutgers would still have had big time football/athletic programs even if they had remained in their old leagues. The FCS schools might not have.

And for the record, I am most definitely not a fan of Liberty University or many of its past actions. I have nothing in particular against the school either.

damn, how are we going to fill up 900 posts lampooning College Football Playoff? As odious as they were, at least Leaders and Legends provided hours and hours of entertainment and used buckets upon buckets of imaginary internet ink.

i voted for logo #2; not a great logo, but at least it’s nice and clean.

I think #4 (currently polling the highest at 34%) is too busy, too nautical, spiky or something. I think that is supposed to be a directional symbol from maps (North, East, etc.). But they did a bad job with it, imo.

#1 is block-ie (not in a good way) and hard on the eyes with some white lines extending to make the lines on the football, but the other white lines receding behind the football.

the third looks like stylized antelope antlers, which might be nice. but the rest of that proposed logo is a mess. better to have had the letters/words follow the form of the “antlers” and maybe gone with a blue instead of grey? “College” curving along the left antler, curved “Football” at the top and then “Playoff” on the other side. eh, whatever. as is, i hate #3.

New info on the logo for the CFP. Somebody in Texas, I believe, had voted 50,000 times for number four. I believe he formerly worked for NATO. :) With the new corrected votes, the flag football has 26%, the eyeball football has 38%, the antelope horn football has 27%, and the NATO football has 9%. Did the legends and leaders crew do these too? WTF? Can’t we outsource these designs somewhere?

It will be interesting to see what the relative payouts per school will be for the ACC, SEC and Big Ten post-2016. By then, the SEC and ACC will have their conference networks running while the B1G will be looking at a large increase in its conference distributions due to the new television contracts.

According to a June 2012 article, Florida State received conference distributions from the ACC of $13.1M for the 2010/11 season and $16.9M for 2011/12. This wasn’t just television money–it included distributions from the bowl game, NCAA men’s basketball tournament,etc.

Right now, that figure is roughly where the Big Ten is now. Per Michigan’s annual budget report, UM received $22.8M in FY 2011, $23.9M in FY 2012 and is budgeted for $25.2M in FY 2013. If that growth continues plus the playoff money is added, then the FY 2014 figure could be approximately $32M. See http://www.regents.umich.edu/meetings/06-12/2012-06-X-19.pdf for budget figures.

The college football playoff revenue is outlined here–http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/ncaaf/bowls/2012/12/11/college-football-bcs-playoff-revenue-money-distribution-payouts/1762709/ It’s probably fair to say that schools from the major conferences will get an additional $6M or so, although it may vary. For example, the ACC gets $27.5M from the Orange Bowl while the Big Ten will split $80M with the Pac 12 (thus the Big Ten gets an extra $12.5M over the ACC).

So let’s fast forward to 2017. If the ACC revenue goes up about $1.3M per year from the $27M baseline for 2014, then the conference is looking at payouts of perhaps $30M to $31M for each school. Seeing that it was $13.1M in 2011, that’s a nice change for those schools.

If we do the same for the Big Ten, the number in 2016 (immediately prior to the new contract negotiations) would be around $35M (one article about Maryland’s entrace into the B1G has payments for 2014/5 being around $32M with the 2016 figure being $34.5M.). WIth the new contracts in place, the B1G told Maryland to look for payouts of around $43M in 2017 and going up to $44M in 2018 and $45M in 2019.

If all this holds true, then in 2017, the Big Ten schools will be looking at payouts of around $43M and the ACC schools will be at around $31M–a difference of $12M. Since the Grant of Rights runs through 2026-7, that means if this revenue difference holds, then B1G schools will receive $130M more in that ten year time period.

I realize that’s a back of the envelope calculation and there are factors over the next 14 years or so that could change these numbers and the assumptions around them. While the ACC schools will certainly be in better shape financially than they were a few years ago going forward, there’s still a big difference between what they will be getting and what their Big Ten (and SEC) counterparts are potentially looking at in the future.

I have to wonder what the ACC presidents and athletic directors were thinking with the Grant of Rights decision. Did they feel that keeping the conference together was worth more than the extra money individual schools could have gotten if they’d joined the Big Ten or the SEC? Did they feel that the extra revenue they were projected to get by staying in the ACC would be enough to run their athletic departments at a profit and in the desired fashion?

I keep wondering about North Carolina. I realize UNC would be tough to get out of the ACC, but here’s a school with 28 sports, a $70M budget and is barely breaking even. UNC’s athletic director recently talked about having a $100M budget and the extra money the ACC will be distributing should help get them roughly halfway there in the near term. Was staying in the ACC that important to them that they’d give up $100M plus from now until the end of the GoR?

25 memories from conference realignment, many of which I had forgotten about or never knew. My favorite is #10.

“10. The realignment expert Blogspot: bumper crop!

Source very close to the situation at West Virginia says the Big Ten has its hand on UConn’s fanny and is engaging Project: Squeeze. It’s a done deal.

Done. Deal. Ink is in the inkplace.

Over on my Twitter feed, which you can follow, I’ve been engaging with some folks from the ACC camp, who feel Oklahoma State is set to pop. Too soon. If you follow me, you know it’s the wrong OSU being discussed, based on my knowledge of the inner workings at West Virginia. Follow me to learn what O stands for. I’ll show you if you follow me.

D. O. N. E. Get married yesterday.

This is the big one. Plugged-in West Virginia booster says the SEC is joining the Big 12.

Fait accompli. I swear upon the souls of my descendants through the year 3131.

Hang on. Situation changing. Emerging intel from West Virginia. RSS me for more on Louisville.

It got even weirder on message boards. You can only imagine.”

A little swipe at the Dude, eh?

I’m grateful for FTT though this realignment ride for keeping it real. Never pretending to be a reporter or insider; just used intellect, common sense, and honest opinion to create interesting debate and insight. Probably could have made a lot of extra cash had he sold advertising, considering the hits this blog has gotten, but didn’t design the blog for money-making purposes…

Yes, the MAC added UMass to even up its football divisions, and instead UMass is now “odding up” the divisions.

But if power conference realignment is settling down for a bit, the MAC might elect to wait a while. After all, once the Sunbelt gets back to 12, the MAC may be the last ticket that gets offered into FBS for a while, so the MAC might decide not to rush things.

Indeed, the MAC might exercise its option to insist that UMass go all-sport or else leave, which AFAIU is ripening on the second anniversary of Temple leaving.

With the ACC off the table, the Maryland (and particularly) Rutgers adds constitute a bridge to nowhere for the Big Ten. Lets hope BTN starts piggybacking on that Pinstripe network soon or this could go down as the biggest gamble/mistake of the expansion era. I can’t imagine Delany saw this coming, and if he did the B1G should have taken FSU when they had the chance.
According to Warchant, FSU was making headway with the B1G but feared getting shutout and being relegated to the B12, so they agreed to the GOR for security sake.
600 comments, most unhappy about Tobacco Row status quo for the next dozen years.

That’s ‘Tobacco Road’.
Also not surprised that the Big Ten was taking a serious look at Oklahoma, Vanderbilt (according to Dodds article). Neither likely, but it shows the weren’t as rigid in their thinking as some assumed.

Lets hope BTN starts piggybacking on that Pinstripe network soon or this could go down as the biggest gamble/mistake of the expansion era.

Nah. Big East turning down ESPN’s $130 million is the worst. The Big XII refusing to sign a GOR in 2009* (when Tom Osbourne inquired about the possibility) and the PAC killing the PAC-B1G alliance and (depending on who you ask) passing on the Oklahoma schools are also much worse.

*Though some of the conference’s then members are better off because of the conference’s decision

I can’t imagine Delany saw this coming, and if he did the B1G should have taken FSU when they had the chance.
According to Warchant, FSU was making headway with the B1G but feared getting shutout and being relegated to the B12, so they agreed to the GOR for security sake.

Well, the GOR may not kick in until July 1, so maybe FSU is just playing a really high stakes game of chicken with the Big Ten.

I mean I seriously doubt it, but it’s fun to imagine they are.

600 comments, most unhappy about Tobacco Row status quo for the next dozen years.

Same at their SB Nation site. Even those fans who didn’t favor bolting are pretty perplexed as to why FSU would agree to do this unless the conference agreed to make major concessions.

Here’s how I interpret FSU’s acceptance of the ACC grant of rights: despite being the most valuable school in the conference, it actually didn’t have the most (or maybe any) viable alternative conference options compared to several other ACC schools.

As I’ve said repeatedly to the chagrin of West Virginia bloggers: the Big 12 has been a paper tiger. FSU wanted nothing to do with joining the Big 12 and preferred the current ACC compared to being forced to move there. What FSU wanted was either the Big Ten or SEC to come calling, yet for various reasons (and believe me, I personally don’t agree with many of those reasons), they preferred a number of other ACC schools over the Noles.

So, FSU was hardly in a position to dictate terms here. What they likely saw was that they were more likely to end up in an ACC without potentially UVA, UNC, Georgia Tech, Virginia Tech and/or NC State or get forced to join a Big 12 that was less desirable to them compared to staying in the current ACC than getting an invite from the Big Ten or SEC.

Once people internalize that the Big 12 was never a viable choice in the eyes of FSU, then it’s much easier to see why they might have actually *led* the charge to get a grant of rights into place as opposed to being “forced” to sign it. There were several schools ahead of FSU in the pecking order for the Big Ten and SEC, which were the only places that the Noles wanted to go to. As crazy as it sounds considering how incredibly valuable that school is, they were actually in very real danger of being left behind in or forced into a league that they didn’t want at all.

So, FSU was hardly in a position to dictate terms here. What they likely saw was that they were more likely to end up in an ACC without potentially UVA, UNC, Georgia Tech, Virginia Tech and/or NC State or get forced to join a Big 12 that was less desirable to them compared to staying in the current ACC than getting an invite from the Big Ten or SEC.

Once people internalize that the Big 12 was never a viable choice in the eyes of FSU, then it’s much easier to see why they might have actually *led* the charge to get a grant of rights into place as opposed to being “forced” to sign it. There were several schools ahead of FSU in the pecking order for the Big Ten and SEC, which were the only places that the Noles wanted to go to. As crazy as it sounds considering how incredibly valuable that school is, they were actually in very real danger of being left behind in or forced into a league that they didn’t want at all.

The only problem I have with that logic is if FSU was concerned all those other schools were looking to bail, then why did the other schools sign the GOR? I mean if UVA and UNC were willing to sign a GOR then it seems like the only way they would leave the ACC is if FSU already had.

I mean what you say certainly makes some sense and I don’t necessarily disagree with out, but that line of thinking opens a whole other can of worms.

The B12 was never a viable choice for FSU president Barron, and academics is the reason. No matter what the difference in conference payout, or how bad the ACC is in football, the GOR will keep FSU alumni from leading a push to go to the SEC or B12 (if no SEC interest) until after he retires. So with no interest from the B1G, the GOR is just what Barron needed to keep the football fans from running over his academic goals.

“the PAC killing the PAC-B1G alliance and (depending on who you ask) passing on the Oklahoma schools are also much worse.”

When did the B10/P12 deal become such a big deal? They already play 9 P12 games and schedule tougher OOC games than any other power conference. All they did was stop themselves from being stuck with having to all play a B10 team every year. Considering that several of them have an OOC rivalry that makes for 10 locked games, why was this not an easy decision? Where was the huge benefit to them in 2500 mile road trips every other year, many of which would be to play mediocre midwestern teams.

By saying no, they can all schedule who they want OOC, including B10 teams. Frankly, I think the B10 really scuttled the deal anyway by insisting on 100% participation. Now that the B10 is going to 9 games, the deal would have been cancelled anyway. This alliance was a bad idea in football from the start.

Where was the huge benefit to them in 2500 mile road trips every other year, many of which would be to play mediocre midwestern teams.

Because after the Big XII became unraidable a quasi-merger with the Big Ten (which is what this was suppose to be a precursor to) was the PAC’s only viable expansion scenario. The fact is, the PAC is desperate to break into the Central Time Zone because 80% of the country is served by the Eastern TV feed (Eastern and Central Time Zones) and needs schools that have actual passionate college sports followings (the two reasons why the PAC was so desperate to grab UT and OU).

Frankly, I think the B10 really scuttled the deal anyway by insisting on 100% participation. Now that the B10 is going to 9 games, the deal would have been cancelled anyway. This alliance was a bad idea in football from the start.

The Big Ten didn’t scuttle anything. The PAC conceived of the alliance and without 100% participation it would have been a glorified ACC-Big 10 Challenge, not the sort of thing that helps the conferences get increased exposure in other regions.

And the Big Ten already had a 9 game schedule in place when the alliance was announced but they dropped it because of the alliance.

Where was the huge benefit to them in 2500 mile road trips every other year, many of which would be to play mediocre midwestern teams.

“Because after the Big XII became unraidable a quasi-merger with the Big Ten (which is what this was suppose to be a precursor to) was the PAC’s only viable expansion scenario.”

And the benefit is what? All they would do is stop playing ACC, B12 and SEC teams in order to play B10 teams. Is there really a lot of money in that change? Their own fans hated the early kickoffs that often came with playing eastern teams.

Frankly, I think the B10 really scuttled the deal anyway by insisting on 100% participation. Now that the B10 is going to 9 games, the deal would have been cancelled anyway. This alliance was a bad idea in football from the start.

“The Big Ten didn’t scuttle anything. The PAC conceived of the alliance and without 100% participation it would have been a glorified ACC-Big 10 Challenge, not the sort of thing that helps the conferences get increased exposure in other regions.”

Feel free to explain the difference between those things. The P12 said they’d do it but not with all 12 teams (at least not at first). The B10 said it’s all or nothing. I see that as the B10 ending it while you choose to blame the P12.

“And the Big Ten already had a 9 game schedule in place when the alliance was announced but they dropped it because of the alliance.”

Having decided to go to 9 games with the 2 new additions, I don’t think they could backtrack to 8. Therefore, the alliance would have to go. It was different with 12 teams, when you could stick to 8 games.

“And the Big Ten already had a 9 game schedule in place when the alliance was announced but they dropped it because of the alliance.”

Having decided to go to 9 games with the 2 new additions, I don’t think they could backtrack to 8. Therefore, the alliance would have to go. It was different with 12 teams, when you could stick to 8 games.

Your timeline is off. The PAC alliance was killed before the additions of Maryland and Rutgers. Delany said that the PAC-B1G Alliance was a substitute for expansion and had the PAC not backed out they would not have added Maryland and Rutgers.

The P12 said they’d do it but not with all 12 teams (at least not at first). The B10 said it’s all or nothing. I see that as the B10 ending it while you choose to blame the P12.

No that is not what happened. The PAC agreed that all their teams would participate. That was always the plan since the deal was originally announced.

However, about a year later 3 PAC schools (believed to be USC, Stanford and Oregon) reversed course and informed Scott they would not participate in the football portion of the alliance (at least initially). The PAC did offer to delay the start of the alliance or exclude some teams from participation, but the Big Ten (correctly) noted that neither of those conditions were the deal they agreed to and that the Big Ten had already made scheduling sacrifices by dropping the 9 game schedule and cancelling future OOC series. The PAC tried to pressure the holdouts but failed and announced that they were pulling out.

The fact is the Big Ten held up their end of the bargain and the alliance would still be around had the PAC not tried to change the deal after all the agreements had already been made.

“Because after the Big XII became unraidable a quasi-merger with the Big Ten (which is what this was suppose to be a precursor to) was the PAC’s only viable expansion scenario.”

And the benefit is what? All they would do is stop playing ACC, B12 and SEC teams in order to play B10 teams. Is there really a lot of money in that change? Their own fans hated the early kickoffs that often came with playing eastern teams.

The benefit is that by playing a high concentration of games in one region they could start to build a following in said region and charge a higher rate for their network in that area. And as the ties between the conference’s grew they could begin packaging their networks together to help get even higher rates. And (most importantly) they could time their contracts to expire at the same time allowing the two conference to hold mutual negotiations thereby increasing their leverage with the TV networks (which is what Larry Scott said was his ultimate goal).

(And that is to say nothing of the massive benefit schools like WSU and Colorado (who are so desperate for cash that they are selling home games) would get from a guaranteed home and home with a Big Ten team every year. The fact is even the worst Big Ten teams are better than what they have been attracting on their own)

“The PAC alliance was killed before the additions of Maryland and Rutgers. Delany said that the PAC-B1G Alliance was a substitute for expansion and had the PAC not backed out they would not have added Maryland and Rutgers.”

And we’re to take him at his word on that? The alliance solved our demographic issues somehow?

I was talking from the POV of the B10 expansion still happening. Thus the B10 now had 14 teams. That necessitated 9 games. Thus, the alliance would have been sacrificed or at least downgraded (maybe 7 games each year in FB instead of a full slate).

“No that is not what happened. The PAC agreed that all their teams would participate. That was always the plan since the deal was originally announced.

However, about a year later 3 PAC schools (believed to be USC, Stanford and Oregon) reversed course and informed Scott they would not participate in the football portion of the alliance (at least initially).”

How is that different from what I said? The P12 wanted a partial deal and the B10 said all or nothing. A deal could have been done, but the B10 walked away. If you want to blame the P12, help yourself.

“The benefit is that by playing a high concentration of games in one region they could start to build a following in said region and charge a higher rate for their network in that area.”

The P12N was never going to get a significantly higher rate in the midwest from this. That’s wishful thinking. There are nowhere near enough P12 fans in the midwest to do that, and there aren’t enough hardcore B10 fans willing to pay another conference big money either.

“(And that is to say nothing of the massive benefit schools like WSU and Colorado (who are so desperate for cash that they are selling home games) would get from a guaranteed home and home with a Big Ten team every year. The fact is even the worst Big Ten teams are better than what they have been attracting on their own)”

Yeah, IN would really pack the house for them. MN, PU and IL too. Where was the big benefit to USC, who can play anyone they want and already has ND annually? Stanford (ND)? Utah (BYU)?

I’ve always thought this plan was way overblown and I’ve yet to hear anything that changes my mind.

I would assume the PAC wouldn’t be looking to find Midwest alumni subscribers but rather B1G fans interested in B1G/PAC games on the P12N. The reverse would be true in reverse for the BTN showing those games.

“I would assume the PAC wouldn’t be looking to find Midwest alumni subscribers but rather B1G fans interested in B1G/PAC games on the P12N. The reverse would be true in reverse for the BTN showing those games.”

Well, I assume they want both, but yes I agree in general. But how many diehard B10 fans will willingly pay another conference significant money every month to see 1 road football game every other year? I can’t see that being a large enough number to drive a significant rate hike in most places. It’s bad enough to raise your TV bill, but knowing you are directly subsidizing your competition is another affront.

Maybe they would have proved me wrong, but I don’t see it. I just think sports bars and honey-do lists would have done well that weekend.

Unlike you, I have an interest in a number of schools. It wouldn’t be just one FB game. The PAC was able to hold back from the primary contract more than a third of the games. I’d hope the B1G would look to do something similar in the upcoming contract to increase BTN value. Plus I have interest in other non revenue sports. I get BTN and P12N now, and look forward to the possibility of getting the SECN. Not for FB (get too much of that on ESPN/CBS), but baseball, W Gym, M/W T&F, etc.

Isn’t the nature of a cooperative venture to assist the other party as they assist you? Seems strange to label the partner as competitor. Kinda B12ish.

I’m well aware of all the other sports also participating. I was just mentioning the football aspect since that is what drives the most fans.

“The PAC was able to hold back from the primary contract more than a third of the games.”

Yes. 1/2 of the games would be under B10 control anyway. Of the rest, several would likely go to their national deals. So let’s say the P12N gets 2 of the 12 games each year. That’s pretty low odds any given fan’s team will be on the P12N. How much pressure will they put on their provider over that?

“I’d hope the B1G would look to do something similar in the upcoming contract to increase BTN value.”

I don’t. I’d rather they get true national coverage for all the good games. The only way the B10 can overcome the negative stereotype is for people to see good B10 teams play well. Why hide that on the BTN? Save the BTN for lesser games like now.

“Plus I have interest in other non revenue sports. I get BTN and P12N now, and look forward to the possibility of getting the SECN. Not for FB (get too much of that on ESPN/CBS), but baseball, W Gym, M/W T&F, etc.”

Lot’s of people do. I talked about how much people would be willing to pay, not whether people would watch.

“Isn’t the nature of a cooperative venture to assist the other party as they assist you? Seems strange to label the partner as competitor. Kinda B12ish.”

Best I can tell the B10 would be helping the P12 a lot more than the other way around. And as long as college sports are set up as they are, we directly compete with the P12 for spots so they are the competition. I view that as more important than Delany trying to squeeze some more pennies out of TV deals.

“So Ohio State should never go on the road, except begrudgingly for conference mandated games?”

I didn’t say that, but yes from a financial perspective. Road games cost OSU money.

There’s no reason OSU should be constrained to playing west coast teams instead of teams from all over, though. They also shouldn’t be stuck playing a mediocre P12 team when they could’ve played a power from somewhere else. The alliance wasn’t going to provide OSU/USC every time.

“It would have been one out of four OOC games. I think they could have managed to replace a macrafice game if faced with a mid level PAC.”

Except OSU is already getting rid of those games. The problem is that if you don’t know whether you’ll play USC or WSU or at home or on the road, you can’t afford to also schedule OU OOC. Therefore all the elite OOC games have to go away and you only occasionally get USC.

“There was talk about scheduling power against power more frequently.”

There was talk of lots of things. Talk is meaningless. The lesser programs weren’t going to sign on just to play each other, they wanted some access to the big names. If the alliance talks had progressed further and they actually ironed out some of the important details, then you might have a better case (depends on the details). But as it stood, there was no set rotation or promise of big vs big or even assured years each team would play at home. Thus, it wasn’t better than just scheduling your own OOC games like normal.

As a Michigan alum who lives in the Washington DC area, the additions of Maryland (20 minute drive from my home) and Rutgers (3.5 hour drive) is hardly a bridge to nowhere. Having the Wolverines regularly play football, basketball, etc. on the east coast within easy distance from a lot of fans hardly constitutes a bridge to nowhere.

In three years’ time, if we have solid revenue projections after the new television deals are negotiated that annual conference distributions are in the low $40M range, I suspect no one will be complaining about the additions of MD and RU to the Big Ten. In fact, there may be some ACC schools who will be scratching their heads about agreeing to the GOR.

Athletic departments could always use the extra resources, so it’s a curious thing the ACC programs took a pass on the chance of getting into the Big Ten or SEC. Then again, maybe the safer, more conservative move was to sign the GOR, get a nice bump in annual conference distributions from television (perhaps $3M per school) and the playoff (around $5 to $6M per school), and to manage their departments accordingly.

So what do we have in the wake of all this maneuvering these last three years? College athletics went from six major conferences to five as the Big East dissolved and mainly moved into the ACC. Those conferences have 64 programs with Notre Dame and Brigham Young being the only major semi-independents left. Football goes from the BCS to a four-team playoff, which is marginally better, but will still be controversial because of the number of teams and because a committee is making the selections. Everybody will be getting more money as new media deals have been put in place or are yet to be negotiated. In the meantime, there’s concern that the NCAA is unable to manage college sports on all levels.and the O’Bannon case may change the entire business model of major college athletics.

“As a Michigan alum who lives in the Washington DC area, the additions of Maryland (20 minute drive from my home) and Rutgers (3.5 hour drive) is hardly a bridge to nowhere. Having the Wolverines regularly play football, basketball, etc. on the east coast within easy distance from a lot of fans hardly constitutes a bridge to nowhere.”

That area is so important to MI and OSU that they’ve scheduled roughly 0 football games there in the past 50 years. Both played at BC a time or two and OSU was in a Kickoff Classic in NJ, but neither ever felt the need to play games there against local teams. Suddenly games there are now a priority and of high value?

Of course they do, but games don’t instantly acquire high value. Based on past scheduling, it seems fair to assume the schools felt games there had a low value before. That value is increasing, but it didn’t suddenly make a large step-change in value.

The part of the Northeast Corridor from the southern part of the NYC media market through to DC ~ including solidifying the Big Ten’s position in Philadelphia ~ counts as “somewhere”, so that makes Rutgers and Maryland bridges to somewhere, entirely independent of what happens in the balance of the NYC media market.

It will be interesting to see if the B1G and ACC can do anymore with the northeast than the Big East could. Or if it continues to mostly ignore college football. ACC now has 6 core 50s era ACC schools, 2 more recent adds (GT 78, FSU 92) and 7 former Big East schools, all but Louisville together in Big East prior to the 2004 raid.

@bullet – I think a major chip that the Big Ten obviously has that the Big East never had is Penn State. Plus, Michigan and Ohio State have very large East Coast alumni bases. No one may ever be able to “own” the Northeast in the way that the SEC owns the South or the Big Ten owns the Midwest, but the Big Ten is definitely putting up a much better lineup to plausibly get a good share of it. The ACC will be interesting since its Northern flank really is just the old Big East. I tend to think it will perform better in the Northeast compared to the old Big East from a pure football standpoint, as well, but it doesn’t have quite the same concentration of alums as the Big Ten in the NYC to Philly corridor (DC seems to be a 50/50 battleground) and they don’t have the urban Big East Catholic schools to lean on for basketball.

Sorry, but I have to comment. The “bridge to nowhere” destroyed what would have been a league stretching completely from Florida to upstate New York/Massachusetts by “blowing a hole in the middle!” The market from DC/Baltimore/Philadelphia (and most of Eastern Pa) running through Delaware, NJ and hopefully parts of NYC has NO ACC presence—None. That means that the ACC is a league with a southern presence (with count it, FOUR schools in NC) and then picks up again in upper Western PA, NY and MA. The whole mid-Atlantic which houses a greater part of the government is solidly in the Big Ten camp with its number 5 population density. Considering how many Big Ten grads are in that region, and the fact that NJ, DC, Philly and Balimore are decent recruiting grounds for football and basketball, I think one wouldn’t necessarily call that the “bridge to nowhere.” I happen to think it was brilliant but time will tell.

If FSU (or VA, GT, etc.) was really interested in the B1G they would have called Delany when the ACC GOR was proposed. Since they all signed the GOR either the B1G was not interested or the ACC schools decided against joining the B1G.

With a 9-game schedule, northern XII schools in some years would visit the state of Texas twice and the state of Florida once each year. For some years, where they travel to the state of Texas just once, they could jigger the schedule to have the opponent be UT or TCU. For all the jokes about directional U’s, the reality is that conference still needs new recruiting grounds to relieve the stress off Texas recruiting, especially now that the SEC has a more direct presence there.

Some cogent points there — and if the Big 12 bought into it, South Florida could come out of this smelling like a rose compared to Cincinnati and Connecticut — but there still is a “directional stigma,” as any East Carolina fan would attest.

Yes, a true directional school must be a public non-flagship university with a direction in its name that indicates a location. As a result, private schools such as Northwestern or the University of Southern California should never be included in that category.

Definitely ~ look at the trouble that the West Virginia University Mountaineers had getting into the ACC, while if they’d been the Virginia University Mountaineers, they’d probably have got in thirty or forty years ago.

For all the talk about UT blocking expansion, this is why I think the non-Texas schools are going to actually be leading the charge against expansion if it gets serious. If you are any of the old teams in the east (in this particular case), you probably don’t want to give up games against Texas/Oklahoma and at 2 games in Texas every year to add annual home and home games against South and Central Florida.

Granted, a similar argument could be made in the Big Ten against Maryland/Rutgers (and I definitely don’t want to give up games against traditional Big Ten teams for annual home/home with 2 of them given the lack of history), but in that case, you are adding state flagships with wide/potentially wide appeal to a large population which I guess justified it. Most the Big 12 possible expansion targets can’t say the same.

If the Big 12 does expand in the future though, I wouldn’t be shocked at all if its a western based expansion instead of eastern. BYU is obvious if they could get them onboard. UNLV makes a lot of sense long term given Nevada doesn’t have a power conference school (or pro team) and there would be a lot of potential there.

@Transic – IMHO, it will be very hard to keep payouts the same for a UCF-USF expansion. I just don’t see 40 Million in tier one and two TV value and as we know, there isn’t a Big 12 Network to help with payouts on tier three.

Since the whole AACK! is getting $20.6 million a year, its hard to see how just two schools can add $40 million to the Big 12 contract. They might even decrease the contract since it would result in fewer matches of the existing teams.

That is bad. I like the crystal football. I see no reason to change that.

Pat Forde agrees:

“Slive acknowledged that the crystal football, token of titles won during the BCS Era, is likely gone as well. Whoever wins it next January will almost certainly have the last of its kind, before a new trophy takes its place.

(Which is too bad. The crystal football is perhaps the one non-objectionable element of the BCS. It’s actually a much more aesthetically pleasing trophy than the slabs of wood the NCAA hands out.) ”

@bullet – As I said a few days ago on Twitter, you know that it was a bad week when an Elvis impersonator can be accused of attempting to assassinate the President and a Senator and it barely registered as news.

When you read this article and look at the projected future television payouts for the SEC ($28.6M on the higher end) and then look at the projected conference distributions for the Big Ten in 2017 (approx. $43M), the decision by the 15 ACC schools to go forward with the Grant of Rights deal is intriguing.

The stakes for individual schools within the conference were pretty high. If your program was one that likely drew high interest from the Big Ten or the SEC, you were likely looking at a substantially higher pay day than what you’d get in the ACC. That’d be especially true if your program left the conference because there weren’t any really good replacements (UConn, Cincinnati, UCF, USF).

But if you approached the decision as being one member of an existing (and unanimous) bloc of schools within the ACC, then the outlook is different. As Frank pointed out, if FSU had no guarantees of being in the Big Ten or SEC, then backing the GOR in the ACC made sense because there’d still be additional money in it (just not as much as it would be in the other two conferences).

I hope someday Dan Wetzel or another author writes the comprehensive book on the events of the last three years (and perhaps beyond that) regarding conference expansion. I’m sure there are a lot of facinating stories in it. One of them will be how the ACC schools opted to act collectively with the GOR rather than individually for what might well have been their greater self interest.

There may be one last catalyst for major conference expansion before we settle into what we expect will be a quiet period. The ACC network. Now that the SECN negotiations are done and the ACC is “stable” I imagine ESPN will begin to work with the ACC on the ACCN. I imagine the ACC will want no less than what the SEC gets for the SECN, but as we all know the ACC has less to bring to the table than the SEC did. Therefore, will the ACC expand to bring more content to the table to get a better deal for the ACCN?

With the added value from conference network, I think UConn has a decent shot at breaking even for the ACC. We know from Louisville’s comments that the ACC presidents are open to UConn membership. I don’t know about Cincinnati. Is there another candidate?

But what added value will there be from an ACCN? ESPN already owns pretty much all ACC rights. If the ACC expanded to add UConn and Cincinnati, then the ACC would be contributing about 14 football games a year. ESPN owns all other rights. So the conference itself would contribute one football game a week. Even if an ACCN comes to be, I don’t see how the conference itself would get much of a payout increase due to it.

@greg – that’s exactly my point. The ACC doesn’t have much of anything to contribute to get money out of the ACCN. Will they go out and acquire content to gain access to that revenue stream? If they’re going to subject their fans to carriage wars they better be getting something out of it.

No, I don’t think the ACC will go out to acquire content via expansion. They’d still contribute a very small portion of the ACCN content and wouldn’t likely see a large return on it, making expansion detrimental.

@greg – then why does the ACC want a channel at all? Why subject their fans to carriage wars and limiting distribution of their content (i.e. syndicated games and nation wide ESPN3 exclusives would likely go to the ACCN) for a minor payout increase?

Since basketball will be their most important product going forward I think the ACC would, sometime in the next five years, be looking at additional basketball-friendly powers to enhance their network. In fact, I would not be surprise to read rumors of certain schools from the AAC being talked about as full member #15 and #16 (ND will NEVER join in full; they have the best deal of all).

IMO, there are 4 attractive candidates that could positively affect their new network. Cincinnati is the most obviously attractive candidate. So I’ll list them first:

University of Cincinnati – Since the ACC took Louisville and Notre Dame, they’ve established a foothold in the Midwestern and border areas, some distance from the traditional East Coast grounds. Taking Cincinnati would further enhance their presence in the Midwest. They know that they won’t get the flagships of the Midwest and border states anytime soon. That may not matter, as the ACC has made it clear that basketball is their calling card. Cincinnati also has a decent football program, which would be acceptable to the likes of FSU, Virginia Tech and Clemson. They are the best candidate for #15.

I see 3 candidates to be the #16 school:

Temple University – We are well aware that Temple was once kicked out of the old Big East but they were an associate member back then. Since, they’ve made strides to advance their football program and was even invited back to the Big East before that conference amazingly collapsed. However, they still have trouble drawing people to Lincoln Financial Field and there’s question as to whether they can compete in the AAC. Still, they have two things that make them a compelling add: 1) Their basketball program; and 2) their market. Temple would give the ACC a way back into the mid-Atlantic states that the Big Ten has just seized with the addition of Maryland and Rutgers to Penn State. While the ACC can’t overcome the flagship advantage the B1G has in those three states: PA, NJ and MD, going into Philly would blunt that advantage somewhat, maybe enough to make it worthwhile.

University of Connecticut – Here’s a school that has had success in not only basketball but also its football program even went to a BCS bowl through the old Big East. However, their involvement in the lawsuit back ten years ago to stop Boston College from going to the ACC left a bitter taste in the mouth of ACC officials and they haven’t forgotten since. Seeing the likes of Pitt, Syracuse, Boston College, Notre Dame, Miami, Virginia Tech, Rutgers and Louisville leave the Big East, while being left behind in a conference of distant (except for Temple) rivals, has left that schools wondering how they’re going to be competitive going forward. To add insult to injury, the old Big East Catholic schools, called the C7, withdraw from the conference and even negotiated for the Big East name and formed their own conference with that name. UConn seems to be the biggest loser in conference realignment. However, they still are located in the NY Tri-State area and is a flagship institution that is making big strides to improve its academic credentials. They are said to be a candidate to be invited into the AAU within the next ten years. This time, the Big Ten passed on inviting UConn but may give them a closer look in the future.

University of Memphis – A dark horse candidate. Memphis is another basketball power, despite having to compete in Conference USA and, before that, Metro Conference. While not as rumored as UConn or Cinci, they are another Southern basketball power that would complement Louisville in the emerging western area of the ACC and give the ACC a counter to adding a Midwestern school in Cinci. Memphis and Cincinnati may well be the final two schools to join the ACC, if going by ACC logic. Connecticut wouldn’t be surprising, either, but they’ve shown that they’d pick anyone before them. In addition, Memphis gives them the ability to extend their influence into the Central Time Zone.

Now I know some people would bring up Texas but I just don’t see them in that conference. They like the situation they’re in. Even if the alliance turns out to be true and they get an annual with Notre Dame out of it, who says that they wouldn’t keep that game should they move to the PAC 12. The PAC would be able to say that they play 3 games against ND, probably at the expanse of Purdue or Michigan State, reducing the B1G slate to 1 a year (perhaps rotated among several schools).

Therefore, if the ACC were to expand, the likeliest candidates would be Cincinnati and either Memphis or Temple.

Home-and-home with FSU, Pitt, UVa and the Gobblers, but no visits to Comcast from any of the Triangle schools (UNC and Duke were expected, but I thought NCSU might make a visit just to conjure up memories of the David Thompson era — and he, not the guy at the top of this thread, was the greatest player in ACC history — but alas, Debbie Yow probably nixed it). At least SU and ND will come to College Park.

Terrapin fans hope for more equitable treatment from the Big Ten the following winter.

People have made compelling argument for their strength. They cite areas other than sports broadcast that it has stood.
Yet others believe UT wouldn’t get into a position they couldn’t get out of, even if it is a partial grant. Or a threshold number of schools could disolve the conference, and the GOR with it.

The way it works if the B1G were to take Texas, all of the Texas home games, like Michigan at Texas, would belong to the Big 12. Its like a poison pill. Even if the school is willing to take the risk, no acquiring conference will take the risk. Its a lot more solid legally than exit fees, but its the poison pill portion that makes it impenetrable.

Conferences would just wait for the expiration rather than taking the risk.

I agree it seems so, as long as the poison pill is strong enough. I don’t believe any power school would do it, but if a school were to only schedule 3 MACrafice like home games, and only hosted the bottom dweller or two of the new conference, the value increase in their conf road games (plus the value of all tier 3 B12 rights) could be significant enough. Plus the non media rights value of said school. Plus the destabilizing effect on the jilted conference. Sure, they are getting money for the length of the GOR, but then what? Schools prefer stability and assurances even at significant cost.

I don’t see it happening, but I can see how it could. And the fact it could might be where negotiation begins.

It seems like no one really knows what conditions are built in to either GOR. There could be all kinds of things in there. Either or both GORs could provide for the rights to revert back to any school that wants to leave if, let’s say, revenue dips under a certain number, or the school gets an SEC invite, or whatever else. Of course, it also could be that there are no significant conditions, but we just don’t know.

Sportswriters, almost as a rule, know nothing about business or law, and are just terrible on reporting on these things. They’re used to the absolute nature of sports (a win is a win and a loss is a loss). But in law and business, there are a ton of subtleties, and we’re not hearing about them.

B10 with its BTN would have an advantage in this in that they’d get carriage fees from the incoming school, not relying just on their TV inventory. While BTN $ is only supplemental, it would pay a portion of the damages. I think it’s important to look at precedent in this scenario and in CFB there isn’t any yet how about other types of media rights like music, movie, IP, etc?

I’ve said it before. The only team for whom the GOR could be broken for is Texas. The upside of Texas might be worth the short-term downside of floating Texas for several years. Fox and the Big 10 could decide to split the costs of Texas.

Nobody is going to incur the obligation for Kansas St or Pitt. Or even Oklahoma or Florida State. So the GOR keeps them from going anywhere.

But Texas. I could see a bean counter explaining that the upside of having Texas from 2025 to 2040 is worth the downside of paying Texas for 2020 to 2025, despite not receiving the TV rights during that span.

Maybe the Pac-12 would be willing to do it as part of a grand plan to make a real splash and attempt to keep up with the Big 10 and SEC.

Not saying it is LIKELY. Just saying that it is plausible in a financial sense.

And I don’t see how anyone could legitimately break the GOR. Anything can happen in court. But possibilities cannot be converted to probabilities. We are talking about an assignment of rights in exchange for the assignment of rights by others in exchange for television revenue increase by ESPN. All kinds of consideration floating around. This is vastly different from a 12-2 vote to increase an exit fee, as Maryland is currently battling.

To me Texas is the one school for which a GOR on its own isn’t a poison pill. If the B1G (or Pac12) could get one home UT football game, several home game BB games and the ability to show a lot of UT conference away games (which is the big reason the conference cable network would get cable pickup in Texas when the LHN hasn’t, because the LHN doesn’t control rights for away games), AND (I assume) the B1G or Pac12 annual payment to UT would be reduced by the $20mm the B12 would still have to pay UT for the rights they control under the GOR, it would be a no brainer to add them.

It is the combination of the GOR and the Longhorn network that keeps Texas from moving (which is why ESPN won’t pull the plug on that network, since they have no part of the BTN or Pac12 network).

Were Texas to try something like this, say with the Big Ten, it would need a partner. Whom might it be? (We’re being hypothetical here.) I think the conference would prefer an AAU member, so it might be Kansas, if it could solve the KSU situation. Iowa State would dearly love to go, and some political pressure could be placed on the U of I, but it would be a longshot. It’d be hard to pry a non-Big 12 member such as Pitt, and since the SEC has no GOR, Vanderbilt would be a darkhorse contender, with Nashville a quasi-bridge to Austin.

What if AAU membership was a requirement from the Big Ten presidents? It’s easy to say “Oklahoma” or some other football king, but if they don’t have the academic chops, the discussion becomes far more complicated.

Speaking of economics, the BCS’s much groused about ticket guarantees — in which participating schools/conferences eat the cost of their unsold allotment — are not going away in the new system, just getting a little bit smaller. Those guarantees will drop from 17,500 to 12,500 per school.

I think Texas would bring considerable value to the B1G even with the limitations of the GoR. What’s worth more, 12 football games of Indiana per year or about seven games of Texas? If Texas averages 2 1/2 non-conference games at home per year (which the B1G would own because Texas would keep it’s third tier games) and 4 1/2 road games against B1G teams per year, that makes seven Texas games per year the B1G would own the rights to. And that’s if ESPN bails on the Longhorn Network, using its out clause. If ESPN doesn’t bail out, then Texas would be making about $15M for its third third games, which the B1G would undoubtedly deduct from Texas’ share of the money paid to each school for TV rights. Considering that the BTN only made $8M per school last year, Texas’ $15M would look pretty good. And my guess is that one Texas game at Ohio State, Michigan or Nebraska per year would be worth more in (first tier) TV value than twelve Indiana or Minnesota games. I think both Texas and the B1G would make more money than they would otherwise, even during the GoR years.

And remember that, if the Big 12 retains Texas’s first and second tier rights, ESPN and Fox will be choosing Texas’ BIG games most of the time, giving the B1G an extra game on TV most weeks and the Big 12 one fewer for their teams, thereby promoting the B1G instead of promoting the Big 12. You’d have to assume the Big 12 would find that deplorable, having one of their prime TV spots serving as a weekly reminder to a national TV audience that Texas left the Big 12 for the B1G in spite of the GoR. My bet is that the Big 12 would sell Texas’ first and second tier rights to the B1G for pennies on the dollar to avoid that embarrassment and that decrease in TV exposure for their league. Why would the Big 12 want to use their TV spots to promote the B1G?

@DugHol: I don’t think the math works. Most of the media reports suggest that the Big XII schools are receiving comparable payouts to the Big Ten and the SEC. Their media deal isn’t quite as good, but they split it among 10 schools, not 14. It is difficult for me to believe that UT could surrender its home rights, and stil make more money in the Big Ten. As I understand it, Texas does not retain the rights to its entire non-conference schedule. I think they retain one football game per year. The rest are granted to the league, much like the Big Ten’s home OOC games.

That’s without considering the cultural or political issues, which could perhaps be overcome if the financials were compelling, but they aren’t.

Before the additions of Maryland and Rutgers, the B1G was projected to make $43M per team starting in 2017. With those additions plus the addition of Texas, I think those numbers would rise, due to an incredible increase in population base and the addition of a king. Comcast/NBC and Fox,are desperate for content, and CBS definitely wants more, and those three additions would send the bidding war through the roof.

Texas will be over $40 million in the Big 12. Big 12 is projecting over $30 million (based on solid numbers-no assumptions about increased profitability or re-negotiated rights fees) and that doesn’t count LHN.

I agree it won’t happen, but not because of what UT makes from media now. If B1G estimates of 43M before getting into the east coast corridor (already more than UT’s projection). Add that area plus Texas, even if only for away games, each school would only be having to sacrifice a portion of the increase that would generate to make UT more than whole. And only for what time remained on the GOR.

UT isn’t in Maryland shape. They are the richest AD in the nation. Whether I agree with how they spend it is immaterial. They do like money as much as anybody but as long as they are in that position, they can/will make decisions influenced by other factors. Chief among them is control. Unless their fiefdom is no longer viable, which doesn’t happen as long as they and OU stay, they will continue in the Longhorn conference.

I agree it won’t happen, but not because of what UT makes from media now. If B1G estimates of 43M before getting into the east coast corridor (already more than UT’s projection). Add that area plus Texas, even if only for away games, each school would only be having to sacrifice a portion of the increase that would generate to make UT more than whole.

The thing is, UT would need to be a whole lot more than just “whole,” before they’d begin to entertain such a move. The financials in the Big Ten would need to be a quantum leap better, not merely a little, and certainly not break-even.

In the early 2020s, when the various conferences only have a few years remaining in their TV deals, you could start to see some jockeying. But not in 2013. UT knows that they’ll always be in demand. They don’t need to make a hasty decision.

That’s precisely my point. UT isn’t looking for an increase in money, unless it is such that they can say wow, see how much more we are valued. It is the status and/or control the money represenrs they crave, not the money.

Correct. Making the most money possible isn’t necessarily the goal of Texas or other schools that consider themselves to be alpha dogs (such as Notre Dame and UNC). Control (whether real or perceived) has a lot of currency for those types of schools since they have a lot of other revenue sources beyond conference TV money to rely upon.

Texas wants to be associated with East Coast and AAU schools to increase their status. They also would love the CIC for the status and a potentially huge increase in research money. The BIg 12 is fast approaching the SEC in academic standing, if not worse.

You remember how Texas held their noses at the academic reputation of the SEC, refusing to join that “cesspool,” as I think they called it. After losing Missouri, Nebraska, Colorado and A&M, how does the Big 12 smell now?

“Texas wants to be associated with East Coast and AAU schools to increase their status.”

No, Texas wants other elite schools to associate with them. To many that may seem esoteric, but to them the distinction is critical. They could join/associate with most any group if they chose to make the modest concessions necessary.

It isn’t any particular direction (east), only the perception/adulation a move would bring them. It’s not like Stanford, USC, UW, the UC system etc would be slumming. Same with ACC. SEC is improving and yet even with the choice UT has remained in what now looks like #4 or#5 academic conference. Other reasons are determinant for them.

Couldn’t find article in on-line version of Atlanta Journal Constitution, but on April 23rd, there was an article talking about the GOR solidifying the ACC and putting an end to the GT to B1G rumors. Mentioned TV $.

“As an ACC member, Tech will receive $12.8 million in television money for the 2014 fiscal year, fees that escalate to $22.7 million by the end of the contract.”

Interesting. There is an article from last year which states that Florida State received $13.1M in FY 2010/1 and $16.9M for FY 2011/2. These figures include not only television revenue, but all sources of funds, such as the NCAA basketball tournament, bowl games, etc. For FY 2012, it specifically lists television distributions of $2.7M (December 2011), another $2.7M (February 2012) and $5.4M (June 2012) for a total of around $10.8M in television revenue out of the $16.9M (the difference is $6.1M).

Per your information, Georgia Tech is looking at $12.8M in television revenue for the 2013/4 year. If you add that $6.1M from the FSU data above, then the ball park figure for Ga Tech’s FY 2014 revenue would be around $19M to $20M.

The new post season setup will probably add another $5M or so to each program from the five major conferences participating in it. So it might be fair to say that Ga Tech’s total revenue in FY 2015 would be in the $25M range.

The GOR goes to 2027, which means GaTech might be looking at the $22.7M in television plus additional revenue from playoffs, etc. in what might be around $15M to $17M range. That would put the ACC schools in the upper $30M to $40M range in about 14 years from now.

In the meantime, the Big Ten is looking at getting to that figure (if not a bit more) in four years’ time and I suspect the SEC will be right there with them with the new network coming on line. I realize these are back of the envelope computations that can be altered with different assumptions, but this all still speaks to a major income disparity between the ACC and the B1G/SEC starting NLT 2017.